We Must Not Eat Their Fruits
by Shadow131
Summary: (Sequel to We Must Not Look On Goblin Men) When a powerful Senator mysteriously disappears from his rural cabin, Mulder is quick to believe he's the victim of a bad deal with a certain Goblin King. But if he and Scully are to save the Senator from the Labyrinth, then they will need the help of its Champion. Set in Season 2, language and suggestive scenes.
1. Chapter 1

**We Must Not Eat Their Fruits**

A.N.: Hi again! So happy to be back with my favorite federal agents and my favorite Goblin King – and what's this, my favorite heroine? That's right. The sequel is about 115% cooler than the original. We play for keeps around here, folks.

Obviously, this will make far more sense if you read part one, "We Must Not Look On Goblin Men." Or know something about Labyrinth or X-Files. But if you want to throw caution to the wind and read on without those things, I won't stop you. Also, this is set in Season 2 and has some references to its overarching plot, but you won't really be missing anything if you don't know about it.

"The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is credited to the Charlie Daniels Band.

...

The old cabin outside Sylvania had belonged to the Beaumont family for generations. The Senator recalled his grandfather saying it had been constructed sometime after Sherman's march, when Georgia was in enough chaos that it was fairly easy for even a dirt farmer to snatch up a little land. The building only had a wood-burning stove for heat, but Daniel had had modern plumbing installed at Vera's insistence. Vera had hated the old homestead, and frankly, Daniel couldn't blame her too much, he reflected, lowering himself into the rocking chair that was nearly as old as the cabin itself. The runners creaked and his joints creaked, and they were all old together. The poor old place hadn't been really _lived_ in since he took up residence in Atlanta – good Lord, that was more than thirty years ago now. Good old Vera was a city girl, but she'd never made her husband sell off the place. Looked too good on the campaign trail. After all, it let Daniel Beaumont talk about being from the roots of Georgia, of being able to understand the plight of the man on the street. If Sylvania had two thousand residents, it only _barely_ had them, so the Senator looked good as a true log cabin candidate.

There were sentimental reasons to keep the place, too, Daniel mused as he rubbed the oilcloth along the blue barrel of the rifle slung across his lap. Good to get away from all the mud-slinging in Washington, or to escape to after stumping for party candidates across the country. He could hunt overly-lazy deer in the sparse woods, and fish for trout in the Savannah River, and just reflect the way a man of seventy two years has every right to. In the capital, Senator Beaumont was the Chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence and he served on the Committee on Crime and Terrorism. In Atlanta, he gave interviews with Wolf Blitzer. At party conventions, he was the man any candidate needed to win over if he had a prayer of getting past the primary. He was wealthy, he was powerful, and he was to be feared and respected. But in the cabin outside of Sylvania, Senator Beaumont was just Daniel Beaumont, or Danny if he was feeling particularly nostalgic. He was the boy who used to make houses for birds out of sticks, or the young man going to war in a country he'd barely even heard of before arriving.

There was a scratching sound at the window, and it brought the Senator grumbling from his reverie. "Damn old bones," he muttered, about to rise – with difficulty – from the comfort of his chair – but he stopped himself with a contented sigh when he gave the dirty window a second look. Just the old oak rubbing against the panes in the wind again. Vera had been right, he should have gotten the damn thing removed years ago. If he were a younger man, he might have chopped it himself, maybe posed for a few pictures to please his staffers at his senate office. The people who liked him would have cited it as evidence of him being salt of the earth, and the people who didn't would have said the Senator was pretending to be, "of the people," again. Well, shit on them, old Dan Beaumont didn't _have_ to pretend. Danny had campaigned the hard way, without all the old money families like the Kennedys had to kick around. He'd gone door to door for his bid for state senate, so long ago now he almost had forgotten it. He'd relied on cousins and friends to put up posters, borrowed so much money he couldn't look a single man from Sylvania in the eye, ignored Vera so much with his work she damn near walked out – but oh, hadn't it all been worth it, in the end? Hadn't it been grand to win his first election, to get his first taste of power, _real_ power, and then to never, ever stop? A rise to the top like a firework on the Fourth of July. Yes, it had been grand.

Of course, that was just after the war – he'd been so young it was disgusting to think back on it now. Young and broke and full of lofty ideas about democracy and independence, fresh from securing it in Europe. The campaign had been brutal, too, especially with the Governor backing Dan's incumbent rival. He wanted to say he remembered election night with perfect clarity, but that would have been a lie. Danny had been so far down in the polls, his only comfort was to drink himself into a stupor in the old church hall, where too-kind friends were throwing a party to wait for all the votes to come in. "It's a victory party," Vera had assured him as she straightened his tie and pinned a carnation into his lapel.

"The only way I'm going to get a victory is if Stan Michaels drops dead from a sudden cardiac arrest."

Vera patted his jacket down and gave him that scowl he was to know so well. "You wanted this, Daniel, just you remember that. A lot of people put a lot on you, so you go out there and smile for them, and whatever happens will just have to happen." And oh, Dan had smiled at first, had cracked jokes as the results came in, one by one...but the jokes got less humorous as the night wore on, and he stopped sitting by the radio to hear what the numbers were, and started sitting by the bar instead.

It was funny – well, maybe it wasn't so funny – but that was the haziest part in his mind, as the Senator reflected upon it in his old age; like he'd fallen asleep on his stool and dreamed everything that happened after, maybe even his victory.

"Danny boy," that strange voice had purred in the glimmer of paper lanterns hung from the low ceiling. "You look like a man deep in his cups." It had been a tenor voice, he was sure, both then and afterward, and it was smooth – but it didn't have any kind of Georgian drawl or southern twang he'd ever heard before. It almost sounded like the Limeys he'd traded stories with in France during the war, but then again, it also didn't. "Vera's not going to be happy with you for that."

"I owe her father more than two thousand dollars for this whole idiotic idea," he slurred, tossing back his G and Ts like he had to drown something inside of himself. "And another thousand to my cousin Marvin. In debt up to my ears – I don't know why somebody didn't stop me."

"Why indeed..." Beaumont must have drank _far_ too much, for he only remembered the gentleman in a soft blur, like he was a light Daniel was trying to peer at through a pool of water. "What started you on this Quixotic quest in the first place, if you don't mind my inquiring?"

"What?" His brows had pinched together as his head started to pound. "Why'd I run?" He took a deep breath and began his campaign speech. "We've got to make our government understand that we aren't interested in all these tax increases just so some-"

"Yes, yes." The stranger had waved him off, and Daniel had noticed he wore white gloves, like he'd just come from some fancy party. Perhaps State Senator Michaels' own victory shindig in Savannah...It had made the young Beaumont scowl. "'Don't tread on me,' and all that, highly noble. I mean to say, did you have no _personal_ motivations for seeking office?"

"What're you talkin' 'bout?" He was slurring by then.

"A state senator in grand Atlanta...a man from the sticks suddenly in a position of power and influence. It does beg the thought, you know; how easy it would be to pay off all those inconvenient debts when big companies come lobbying to you... And from there, who knows? A few years of lip service and you could be a Congressman in Washington. Fancy things for fancy Vera, respect, _power_...But I'm sure that was never a consideration for your scruples, was it?" Daniel had been silent. "No, I didn't think so." The pale, bright stranger took a long drink from his own glass, a pale golden liquor there that the young Beaumont couldn't place. "Do you want to win?"

"'Course I want to win!" He was so drunk, it had been easy to set off his temper. "Do you think I went to all this trouble because I want to _lose_? Goddamn, you must think I'm some kind of _idio_ -"

"Daniel." The man held up that white gloved hand. In the glow of the paper lanterns, Dan had thought his teeth looked sharp. "What I may or may not think of you is, at this point, completely irrelevant. What I _did_ wish to discuss is how I might help you."

Daniel snorted. "It's a bit late for campaign donations."

" _Not_ for the kind I offer. What if I told you I could make sure you won tonight?"

"What, legally? All straight and that?"

"As straight as an arrow, I promise."

Beaumont had taken another slug of his drink. "I'd ask what I had t'do for it."

"Oh, I'm a man of simple pleasures. Suffice to say, it brings me _enjoyment_ to see a man at the height of his power and influence – and then, if we're being frank, to bend that power to my own."

"I don't rightfully get your meaning."

"No, I suppose you don't." He just vaguely remembered how that gloved finger had trailed along the edge of the glass. "It's not going to make sense to you, Danny boy, you've indulged _far_ past all decency. But when you have power over someone – over someone _powerful_ – why, think of how much grander you are. It's really rather simple, when you're clear-headed enough to contemplate it."

"I suppose so..." Daniel didn't actually suppose anything, he just took another drink and crushed the ice between his teeth.

"Do you accept my bargain?"

He'd wanted to laugh – he might have, in fact, he'd certainly been drunk enough. "You get me to the state senate and then...what? When your company needs a senator to look the other way, I do, is that what you're after?"

"If that's how you wish to couch it, it suffices."

Yes, he'd definitely laughed. He'd laughed fit to break. "If I say yes, what then? D'I lose my immortal soul? You ain't the devil, are you?"

If he'd been real, the stranger had smiled with his thin mouth. "Sadly, no."

"Well, hell, I'll take that bet. It's no worse than the tax break Gordon wants for his sawmill." And Daniel Beaumont had extended his hand, the way he had done a half a million times on the campaign trail. And that strange old fellow had taken it with his own gloved hand, shook once, and smiled.

"A pleasure doing business with you. Oh – and consider seltzer in the morning. For your head, that is, Danny boy, it's going to pound something _dreadful_." That was certainly sensible enough advice – it may have even been what inspired Beaumont to keep right on drinking, because he didn't remember getting the odd man's name, or seeing him leave. In fact, he remembered absolutely _nothing_ about the rest of the party until around midnight, when the final tallies were being read on the radio; when his friends had started hooting and hollering fit to wake the dead; when Vera had grabbed his face and kissed him like he'd just come back from France all over again. Whatever _had_ happened at the party, one thing was for true: Daniel Beaumont had beaten incumbent Stan Michaels and had beaten him _soundly_.

Oh, and a second truth: his head had just about split open from the hangover he suffered. The Senator laughed thinking about it, how he used to drink in his younger days. Grand times, grand times. He had to lay off the sauce, now, though, doctor's orders. Senator Beaumont sighed a little, at last leaning his cleaned rifle against the corner. No more booze and no more cakes, if he wanted to see his grandchildren reach high school, which he supposed he did. A few more years of service to his country – and to the lobbyists that came to his office day after day, and to his accountant, and to his bank accounts – and it would be time to let some new, young, idiotic idealist campaign for his Senate seat. Time to let some wet behind the ears show-boater realize what politics really was; compromise and compromise, and basically no ideals, and yet more compromise. The Danny who drank himself to distraction in the church hall would have hated that. The Dan that rocked in his chair and blinked at the wood stove sleepily had no qualms with his decisions.

Senator Beaumont had been near to drifting off in the rocking chair when the scratching came again, and he grumbled around old, dry lips. That dang blasted oak tree, he'd have to call and-

 _Scritch, scritch, scritch_. But not at the window. At the door to the cabin. Strange, he could think of nothing there to make that noise. A polecat, perhaps, sharpening its claws. A local raccoon hunting for goodies. _Scritch, scritch, scritch_. Beaumont's neck was hurting; he was too old to fall asleep in his chair anymore, Vera would have scolded him fiercely for it. With a grunt, he pulled himself up and dropped the oilcloth on the floor, ready to shuffle off to the comfort of his bed. Trout fishing tomorrow, perhaps some more the day after that, then back to Atlanta to meet with his campaign manager before he returned to Washington. He ignored the scratching noise as he walked to the old bedroom.

The Senator had just finished taking his exhaustive regimen of pills, had just finished pulling on his pajamas, had just been about to crawl under his grandmother's quilt – when he heard the faint whistle splitting the darkness, the thin strains of an Irish folk tune he was struggling now to place...

Then – the light, a pale glow, not at all electric – but a perfectly round ball that lip up a face as white as chalk, and gloved hands and a sharp, sharp smile. "Oh Danny boy..." the smooth tenor purred. "No nightcap, I see? Good man. It's a dreadful habit to get into, you know. Shall we depart, Senator?"

…

"...So the powder burn was here-" Sergeant Loren was pointing at the rough jamb of the bedroom door. Mulder gave the black stain the most cursory glance. "Meaning the intruder was in the bedroom, the Senator had to _leave_ this room to reach the gun, and turn back and fire."

"And if the intruder wasn't blocking his exit, then logically he would have come through the window..." Scully finished the thought as Georgia State Police Sergeant James Loren nodded, his face a grim mask in the dark of the rural cabin.

"That's right, Agent Scully, ma'am," he nodded with genteel southern manners, watching as the small woman scribbled notes into her little book. "And here's where things get a might bit queer."

"Oh good – the part I've been waiting for," Mulder muttered as he popped a sunflower seed between his teeth. Dana shushed him with a brief look from blue eyes.

"Well, for a start," Sgt. Loren graciously ignored the Federal Agent's comment; they did things differently in Washington, after all, and he needed the help. A disappeared Senator was no small matter. "We can't find any evidence that the window was forced – or even opened at all."

"It's possible he came through the front door and moved around toward the window," Scully murmured in response, giving the dark bedroom – its mussed linens, its cold floor – a quick scan. "But it's rather illogical."

"The whole thing's illogical, ma'am. If you could follow me, please." The pair followed the polished step of the officer obligingly, a short trip across the rustic cabin to the front door. "Here's what I really called you in for. I mean..." The man hesitated, slipping two fingers between his throat and collar and tugging slightly. "I mean, the Federal Bureau was notified as soon as we realized Senator Beaumont was missing, but it was when we started relaying the details that they recommend you as, er...specialists."

Fox Mulder was smiling – that smug, amused, slightly put upon kind of smile that Scully had seen so many times, she couldn't keep track. The smile that reached his eyes and made the green stand out. "That's us alright, Loren. What do you have?"

"Well...sir..." Loren stepped away from the front door, motioning other officers and detectives back as well. Scully stiffened as the light of the open door shone upon the floorboards.

Claw marks – it was all they could be. Gouges so deep in the century old wood flooring that no human fingernails could have possibly carved the grooves, no matter in what desperation. They raked from the entryway to the door frame for more than a foot and a half, dug deep into the pulp of the wood, as if...as if they were _dragging_ something. Or someone. Mulder started snapping pictures like the most eager photographer at a "Girl's Gone Wild," shoot.

"You can see why I called you in, sir, ma'am."

"Sgt. Loren..." Agent Scully began a little breathlessly, watching as Mulder lined a ruler against one mark to give perspective. "Have you called in a wildlife expert? Could a cougar or a panther or something have made these marks?"

"Ma'am, we did consider that, even got a zoologist in from Atlanta. Trouble is – it's just too darn neat. No blood anyplace in the cabin. And the Senator was a skilled hunter, ma'am, he came out to this cabin at least once a year to hunt. It's why he was here this weekend. I know he was a gentleman in his twilight years, but I have a hard time believing he couldn't fight off a wild cat – or at least get a good mark on one."

"Sergeant." The man's attention was drawn to Agent Mulder, crouching on the floor with something held between finger and thumb. "Did you note this in your crime scene report?"

"What's that, sir?" It was a feather, Scully realized, as the trooper asked – all tawny and soft, and Mulder spun it neatly between his fingertips. It made the slightest, " _fwip, fwip, fwip_ ," sound as it twirled, around and around and around. "The feather? Why...no, Agent Mulder, I don't suppose we did. I reckon it probably got blown in through the open door by the wind."

"I reckon," the agent smiled, stretching to his feet with a grace that belied his height. He held Scully's elbow by the fingertips and began to lead her out the open door. "We'll have more information for you soon, Sergeant."

"Agent Mulder – sir – don't you want to-!" Too late. The pair of special agents had already disappeared through the incomprehensible crowd of security. State troopers, the sheriff from local Sylvania – and then Secret Service agents, and Scully could spot a few National Guardsmen at the police line, keeping back a crowd of reporters who shouted over each other to get the best sound bites into their microphones.

The glare of lights for the cameras was like a solar flare, it lit up the dark twilight of the wooded area like the noonday sun. Scully blinked against it as Mulder opened her car door before sliding into the driver's seat. "Mulder," the woman protested, sliding her field book into a pocket of her jacket. "I haven't finished taking notes."

"Trust me, Scully, I already have the perfect lead."

"Oh, you do, do you?" She didn't argue with him so much anymore – at least, not so directly. So long as he wasn't being too crazy, Dana was happy to give him his head and see where his instincts took him; they often weren't far wrong. "Do you feel like sharing that lead with me?" she asked, her eyes tilted down as she slid the buckle of her seat belt into its holster. "Since you obviously don't feel like sharing it with Sgt. Lo-" Scully stopped. A light – much brighter, much _whiter_ than any of the camera flares – was glowing from Mulder's palm, where it rested on his lap. A crystal, as round and perfect as a globe, and Fox was holding it carefully in his hand. Perfectly clear, perfectly incandescent, and perfectly terrible. The woman sucked in a breath, pupils pinpricks in her blue eyes. "Mulder, you _kept_ that?"

"It looked good next to my fish tank," he explained with a smile, sliding the object back into the pocket of his long coat and turning the key in the car's ignition. The motor purred into life and the two began the long drive back to the Atlanta airport.

"Well, it's not by your fish tank."

"I guess I felt like carrying a lucky charm for the flight down."

"'Lucky,' is _not_ how I would describe that...thing." Scully's fingers carefully combed through the red bob of her hair, willing the tension away from her shoulders. _Three crystals, three riddles, three nights. A trashed hotel room, a nectarine, three sobbing children. Three, three, the magic number. And then there had been Mulder, clinging to the sill of his hotel window, and a lithe and terrible man standing over him, crowing fit to be crowned while yellow eyes laughed in the darkness. And Scully, with the carpenter's nail in her hand-_ "And how do you know that it's the same. It's not like with the children; the whole country knows Senator Beaumont is missing."

"Call it a detective's intuition."

"Intuition nothing. Why."

"Oh, the claw marks. This..." He tucked the long pinion feather up into the window visor, a small smile playing on his full mouth.

"A feather? Mulder, you heard Sgt. Loren. It could have come from anything."

"And if I'm _wrong_ , Scully, what made the claw marks? Because we both know it wasn't a panther." His partner sat back in her seat, eyes fixed on the road, calculating. The crime scene presented more questions than answers. They didn't have a lot to lose by going by Mulder's hunches, but they had even less to gain. The man sighed. "How about a little music to liven up the drive, huh?" His finger hit the radio's button.

" _The Devil opened up his case and he said, 'I'll start this show.'_

 _And fire flew from his fingertips as he rosined up his bow_

 _And he pulled the bow across the strings and it made an evil hiss_

 _And a band of demons joined in and it sounded something like this..._ "

The radio had caught a local signal without a hitch, and Scully jumped slightly in her seat at the loud sturm and drang of a bass as a violin screamed wildly through the speakers. "A little country rock?" she asked, turning to face Mulder again – but she didn't bother saying anything else. Fox had his eyes on the road and the most awful, the most _delighted_ grin spread across his face that she had ever borne witness to, like he intended to show every single one of his teeth.

"'Hell's broke loose in Georgia and the Devil deals it hard,' Scully," he purred to her.


	2. Chapter 2

Ninety-two-B in a rundown building, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. Why were they always having to chase after goblins in Manhattan, Scully wondered. It didn't seem their most natural environment. The forests of eastern Europe, perhaps, or even the backwater of the Senator's rustic cabin, those made sense, but the crumbling apartment building did not. The name above the bell at the front door had read, "Williams, S." Scully didn't know the exact meaning behind the trip up, but she didn't ask Mulder to explain. There was a feeling in her bones that this was the right course, so she was content to wait it out, to see where he led.

Also, on this trip, they stayed in a different hotel, and that mollified the woman considerably.

They actually stood in front of the door, unmoving, for several quiet moments, though Scully did not know why her partner hesitated. Then again, she did not ask him. Instead, she noticed that the fingers of his left hand were brushing against her own, fidgeting, grasping. She squeezed back lightly, but with purpose. There were more touches now than there used to be; small things, without any particular subtext or significance. Yet Dana Scully knew them for what they were – Mulder reassuring himself that she was still there, that she would not be stolen away in the night ever again. At least, not so long as he was there. She smiled gently as her thumb ran over the rough ridge of his knuckles. Whatever had happened to her while she had been...gone (and she had no idea, and no real wish to know), they were partners once more, and it would take a lot more than mysterious men or office politics to stop that.

Mulder rapped his knuckles smartly on the thin, pine door of apartment Ninety-two-B, and after a low curse and a bit of a groan from inside, it opened; well, it opened as far as its chain would allow it, but that was enough for Scully to catch sight of the face in the door. A girl – a young woman, more precisely, in her early twenties, with a heart-shaped face and green eyes like rubbed sage. Those eyes looked between the two very serious and official looking agents, and the red mouth hummed. "Um...may I help you?"

"Miss Sarah Williams?" Mulder asked, and the name gave Scully a rolling feeling in her stomach. _"If she's not very careful, I think that's the girl that will end up being..._ " Dana could still hear her partner's voice in her head. Oh yes, it was definitely the same girl. It was true Scully hadn't gotten close when they watched her performance (or watched her from the rooftop with her unearthly admirer, either), but she had that same glow in her young eyes. Same rich, sweet voice that had performed Albee's lines on the stage with a flourish. When she agreed that yes, this was her name, Mulder showed off his badge, very casual and calm. "I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, this is my partner, Special Agent Dana Scully. We're with the federal government-"

"Oh my God." With a sudden click and fidgeting of hands, the girl pulled the chain from off her door, pink tongue poking nervously at the corner of her lip. "If this is about Ricky being a pusher, I swear I dumped his ass the minute I found out and I have no idea where he is now."

It wasn't often Scully saw her partner surprised by a response, but he seemed to be this time, pausing and swaying slightly on his feet in incomprehension. At last he was able to reply, "...this isn't about drugs, Miss Williams."

"...oh." She was an elegant young thing, to Scully's mind, even in a pair of worn jeans and a loose fitting sweater; the kind of girl that just gave off an air of grace, whatever her circumstances. She was taller than the federal agent as well, though certainly not of a level with Mulder. Even so, her hands moved restlessly at her sides or over her legs. "What is it about, then?"

"I think we have a mutual acquaintance."

"I don't know who you could possibly-" She stiffened when Mulder pulled his hand from his coat pocket, the crystal held securely between his fingers. The young woman's eyes were wide and her pupils were small in the light it gave off – rather like she had seen a ghost, to Scully's mind. How she wished Mulder would stop dragging that damn ball everywhere... "Where did you get that." Her voice had dropped to a whisper, slightly husky in the quiet of the apartment hallway. "Did Jareth give that to you?"

Mulder blinked, sliding the orb safely back into his pocket. "Jareth?"

Young Miss Williams folded her arms, seeming slightly impatient at this repeat. "The _Goblin King_."

"Oh." The partners exchanged unknowing glances. "We weren't on a first name basis with him."

Sarah snorted. "Yeah, well, don't read too much into that." Before Mulder could ask another question, she pulled the pine door fully open, stepping aside. "You guys might as well come in, this isn't the sort of conversation to have in the hallway."

"We couldn't agree more, Miss Williams, thank you."

"Sarah's fine," she corrected as they walked in, graciously taking Mulder's heavy trench coat and motioning to a threadbare couch not far from the door. As for many twenty somethings, it served more than just the functions of a couch: it seemed to be part table, part closet, part life raft; a notebook and two different colored pens were scattered on one side; a still-plush sweatshirt with the name, " _Columbia_ ," emblazoned across the front hung off the back; and trade magazines were stacked against one arm, or falling off onto the floor. On the coffee table, Scully spied what appeared to be a script, with a yellow highlighter resting atop it. "Sorry for the mess," she murmured, hooking the coat onto a peg on the wall by the door. "I need to be off book by Friday. Tea, coffee?"

Once again, Mulder and Scully glanced at each other, gauging the other's answer. Scully spoke up this time. "Tea would be fine, thank you."

"Feel free to sit down. I'll be out in just a minute." The young lady disappeared around the stucco corner a few feet ahead and to the left of the couch, and the thudding, slightly-crashing sounds of cutlery being moved about could be heard, as well as water running in the sink. Mulder took the opportunity to clear room on the couch for the two of them while Scully indulged in a brief appraisal of the small apartment.

The decorations were a bit eclectic, but they left a nice impression, to her mind. A great many theater posters were tacked to the walls, but sprinkled liberally amongst these were prints of Escher and Waterhouse. Stranger still was what decorated the shelves. Standard family photographs; Scully could recognize the girl a few years younger, beaming as she held a sticky, smiling toddler in her arms. There were graduation photos, and photos of her in costume, bowing with a bunch of roses in her clutch. But next to these there was a funny little statuette of some Tolkien-like dwarfish creature with a bulbous nose. On another shelf, a well-worn stuffed fox had a be-feathered cap on his head, canted at a jaunty angle, and he sported an eye-patch as well. The woman smiled as she flicked the feather, thinking back to her own childhood, before bending to yet more shelves, these a mix of books and films. Many were great plays, either in print or in production, but she could find C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien among them as well. A little, red leather volume whose gold lettering was too faded to read, and the Brothers Grimm next to the Shaw. Scully was about to thumb one of the books when she paused at the edge of the row, a careful frown on her red lips. There was a gap between books, though whatever was causing it was hidden in the shadows of the shelf. _Rather bulky for a bookend..._ She was just reaching a hand through the dusty darkness when the young woman returned, a makeshift tea tray in her arms and a polite smile on her face. "Cream, lemon, sugar, anybody?"

"None for me, thanks," Mulder waved off as he sat up straighter, making room on the table for the tray as Scully wandered back to find a seat next to her partner.

The girl pulled up a chair from the desk stuck into the corner of the room and carefully stirred sugar into her mug as it rested precariously on her knee. "This is probably rude, but I'd like to cut to the chase here. If I mention, 'Goblin King,' to someone, usually I get looked at like I ought to be in an asylum."

"I've gotten that, from time to time," Mulder assured her with a thin smile, while Scully just looked at him from the corner of her blue eyes.

"You know the Goblin King – but you don't know his name."

"No," the older woman replied, setting her own mug down to cool. "But you do. You seem to know more than we do."

"But you guys work for the government. Shouldn't you have files on, like...everything?"

"Oh, we do," Mulder assured, sipping at the drink despite its heat with a familiar mischief in his muddled eyes. "Like that deduction on your taxes last year? For shame, Miss Williams."

The young Sarah woman smiled a little more easily, smoothing her sweater over her torso. "Right...well, why don't you start with why you're here? Because I really don't have a clue."

"It's about Senator Beaumont."

"Senator Beaumont?" she repeated, blinking green eyes and pointing behind her toward her television set. "The one on the news, the one on all those subcommittees – the one who's missing?"

"That's right."

"And you think _Jareth_ did that." There was almost a laugh to her voice; not that the situation was so funny, but just a gasping moment of incredulity at the conclusions Mulder was drawing.

His thick brow furrowed. "You disagree?"

"It's just that I've only ever known him to steal children, not... _senators_."

"You must know him pretty well."

Sarah fixed the man with a bit of a cold look. "I _really_ don't. What makes you suspect Goblin Kings anyway, and not...I dunno, a terrorist cell?" Mulder pulled the tawny feather from the inner pocket on his blazer, letting it twist between his fingers again. With hardly a moment's hesitation, the young woman took it in her hand, stroking it gently against her fingertips. "A feather?"

"It just seemed a little questionable – that, plus the claw marks."

"I'm no ornithologist, so I'm afraid I can't tell you if these are the feathers of a mystical Peeping Tom or not." She gave a thin smile as she handed it back. "Sorry, Detective."

"Special Agent."

"If you don't mind my asking...why come to me? What did you think I could do?"

The million dollar question: Scully turned slightly on the couch to face her partner. Mulder slumped backwards with a sigh. "Well, I don't know who else I would go to about Goblin Kings. The only other person who has spent any time with him – besides Scully and myself – is a ten year old boy. Not the best for hostage negotiations."

"But...why _me_? I mean, you're federal agents. I'm an actress. What did you expect of me?" She seemed genuinely curious.

"You _did_ beat the Labyrinth, didn't you?"

Her green eyes went a little bit wider, her breath came in with shallower gasps. "You know about that, too?"

"Not exactly. It was a bit of an educated guess." Mulder's jaw worked back and forth as if he were chewing a seed. Thinking, Scully realized.

The woman was staring into her cup, looking a little pensive. Scully's brow pinched together, watching her. "...there might be something I can do..." she mumbled, her voice just barely making it past her mug of tea.

"Needless to say, your government would be appreciative."

Sarah snorted slightly, setting down the mug and rising to her feet. "Gee, thanks. You two can watch, if you want, but it's going to get a bit weird."

"'Watch?'"

"Weird?" The girl had already disappeared through a door – probably her bedroom, Scully surmised, rising to her feet as her partner leaned over to whisper in her ear. "I already like where this is going." Scully's eyes rolled, but her mouth smiled.

The two agents walked slowly into the young woman's bedroom – not quite tidy, not quite neat. Certainly it wasn't in the bedraggled state of her sofa, but there were a few items of clothing scattered along foot boards and dripping off coat hangers. There weren't as many posters here as in the living room, and abundantly more pictures of family; that little towheaded boy featured prominently, in every stage from infancy to young childhood, and there were quite a few pictures of him with the girl that must be his highly devoted elder sister. The only way they really seemed to look alike, Scully thought, was in the roundness of their nose, perhaps the brilliance of their smile, but otherwise, they were as different as night and day. And where was that dark haired sister? She was already seated at her vanity, an antique and wobbly piece of furniture painted white, bits of costume jewelry and stage makeup mixed haphazardly among the genuine items along its cluttered top. The elder female agent just caught her saying, "Hoggle, I need you."

Neither Mulder nor Scully had time to ask what she was doing, or who Hoggle was – because a face appeared in the mirror, reflected next to Sarah's own smooth features. Scully tensed slightly; the position of the face meant he ought to be standing between she and Mulder, the way he met eyes with Sarah in the mirror. And as for that face...not human, that was clear. _Humanoid_ , yes, but he looked remarkably like that bulb-nosed statuette in the living room, with a grating voice and clipped speech. "'ere now, Sarah," this creature, this Hoggle began, casting glances at the two federal agents. "What's all this?"

For her part, Sarah didn't even blink, her fingers running smoothly along her vanity top and acting as though this was the most normal occurrence in the world; but, for her, perhaps it was? "Hoggle," the young woman said, her voice melodic in the dark of her bedroom. "This is important. Has anyone shown up in the Labyrinth recently? Is there someone new there?"

"Someone new?" With sausage-like fingers, the dwarfish creature scratched at grey tufts of hair that poked out from beneath a leather skull cap. "T'ere ain't been no new Runner, if that's what yer worried about."

Sarah turned in the vanity seat and looked at the agents with eyes that were unnervingly clear and calm. "Senator Beaumont wouldn't have made any wishes, would he?"

"To the Goblin King?" Mulder was adjusting his tie, eyes still fixed on Hoggle, who seemed to be glaring right back at him. "I very much doubt it."

Sarah turned round again. "Not a Runner, Hoggle. Just a person. Someone really important in my world – older, talks kind of funny-"

"Well..."

"Well?"

The Hoggle creature's eyes were blue and wet, and he looked furtively about, as though struck with nerves. "There was a bit o' gossip about someone showin' up at the Castle day or two ago. Goblins haven't stopped cacklin' about it yet." Goblins...Scully couldn't repress a shudder, and was glad to feel her partner's fingers at her elbow. Those little eyes, those little teeth, and yes, those _cackling_ voices in the shadows...

Sarah sighed, leaning back on her vanity seat with her fingers tucked beneath the rim of the chair to balance herself. "That sounds about right..." Wordlessly, she turned her face to the two agents, green eyes filled with questions.

Scully half turned to Mulder, her voice a low whisper. "That's not compelling evidence that the Senator's in the Underground – but I'm not going to say it wouldn't make _some_ amount of sense. The time frame is right, at least."

Mulder addressed both the women. "How would we get there? Through the mirror, is that how it's done?"

"It would work," Sarah nodded. "That's how Hoggle and the others come in and out."

"What others?"

The girl's nose crinkled. "Not the Goblin King, if that's what you're asking."

Mulder was silent a minute, hands fisted in his pockets. "...Scully?"

Her pause was nearly so pregnant as her partner's. "If Senator Beaumont is in there, we _have_ to go get him."

"That's what I was thinking."

"Wait a second!" The woman twisted in her seat, body half turned away from the vanity to address the two investigators. "Have you ever _been_ in the Labyrinth before? Do you know what you're up against?"

"We haven't been in the Labyrinth, no," Scully affirmed, quietly pulling out her sidearm and giving it a quick check for ammunition. She could see the girl swallow nervously from the corner of her blue eyes. "But I'd like to think we know what we're up against."

"Not if you haven't been in the Labyrinth you don't. What would you even do when you got there?"

"Go to the Castle?" Mulder offered, seeming somewhat amused by the bent of this conversation.

"It's not like it's a stroll down the yellow brick road, you know! It's – _you'd_ -!" She puffed and flustered a moment longer before she took a very deep breath, teeth worrying at her lower lip and turning back to the vanity. "I mean...I guess I'd have to go with you."

" _What_?" That was the gruff incredulity of Hoggle, and before Scully could blink, she found the strange little creature at her side, standing in the exact position he would have been to cast his reflection in the mirror. The woman jumped slightly, her fingers tightening on her gun, but she reigned her calm back in masterfully. "Have you gone out of our bloody head! Jareth'd smell you the instant you touched your foot in the Underground!"

Sarah stood easily from her vanity stool, a kind of regality in the gesture, despite the drabness of her cheap apartment. "I can handle Jareth."

" _You_!" The dwarf blustered, stomping his small foot, and both Mulder and Scully stepped slightly back from him. "You're plum out of your brain, you are!"

The young woman flicked her long, dark hair over one shoulder before lowering her delicate hand to the dwarf's skull cap, her voice soothing and dulcet in the dark bedroom. "Hoggle," she said with a kind of sincerity that seemed to reach him in his angered panic, "who else would get them through the Labyrinth?"

The dwarfy, hobbity thing smacked his lips in distaste as he tried to formulate an argument. "...well, who cares if _they_ get through the Labyrinth?"

"Gee, thanks very much," Mulder drawled wryly, and Sarah gave him a quick smile before returning her attention back to her friend.

"It's the right thing to do, Hoggle."

"Pah." The dwarf just shook his head, stomping his foot again. "Yer almost as nutty as Didymus with that kind of talk."

"It's a piece of cake!" the girl smiled and straightened. She looked brave and calm, maybe even a bit excited, but Scully remembered that she was an actress, and therefore wondered how much of it was true. "I'd rather not waste any time; do you guys think you'd be ready to go tonight – now?"

Mulder and Scully looked at each other once – nodded. "The sooner the better."

"Great!" Sarah rubbed her palms along the out-seam of her jeans, looking around her bedroom with a thoughtful air. "This is kind of lucky, we can actually prepare this time. Um, Agent...Scully, was it?" The woman nodded her head at the probing look of the girl. Sarah smiled graciously. "You're not going to want to wear all...that. Trust me, I walked it in flats last time and I was ready to just chop my feet off when I got back. I have some hiking boots you can borrow, what size are you?"

"This is bloody foolish this is..." Hoggle was still grumbling, but Sarah was delicately pushing him out toward the rest of her living quarters, and Mulder made to follow.

"I guess I'll wait outside," he smiled at Scully. "Let you get your adventure makeover."

The woman fixed him with something of a cold look, catching his arm just before he could disappear out the door. "Mulder, when all this is over, you owe me some serious anti-psychotics."

"Would you settle for a bottle of gin?" His grin was the last bit of him she had to look at before the door shut.


	3. Chapter 3

A.N.: Sorry for being late, guys; a moderate family emergency meant this slipped from my mind. Back on schedule!

When Mulder had left the bedroom, Sarah smiled at the woman seven years her senior, any nervousness or trepidation disappearing from her features. Without saying anything, the young lady dug a white shirt out of her dresser, a pair of jeans and white, cotton socks. "Do you want me to leave while you change?"

"No," Scully blinked, unbuttoning her suit jacket. "It doesn't make a difference to me."

The girl nodded, sticking her head in her closet to dig for the promised boots while Scully quietly and carefully changed. Her voice was muffled from the mess of the closet. "What did you say your first name was again?"

"It's Dana," she responded, pulling the shirt over her head and fastening the jeans as the young lady casually chucked one hiking boot behind her. "Sarah, yes?"

"That's me! So, how much do you know about the Labyrinth?"

"Nothing, really. We were hoping you might be able to tell us."

"You know about the Goblin King, but you don't know his name or anything about the Labyrinth..."

"Let's just say it was an odd acquaintance."

Dana could hear her snort. "It would kind of have to be, wouldn't it?" The girl turned and sat cross-legged on the floor, the second shoe resting in the hollow of her lap. Her eyes sparkled with a kind of knowing, and Scully carefully laced the first boot. "It's not really a labyrinth, because those are all just one line with no breaks, right?" Scully nodded her agreement with this. "But you can't just call it a maze, it's more than that. The Labyrinth is alive – it moves and changes around the Runner."

Scully held up her hand. "Runner?"

"Oh, right." Sarah tossed her the boot. "The person who made the wish, the one trying to get the child back."

"Of course. Go on."

"Like I said, it changes: you can turn a corner and think you're at a dead end, and then the wall behind you will move. It's as alive as the things in it, really. I don't know if Jareth does it, or it's all on its own, but it's a nightmare to get through. A kind of hell, actually." She called it a hell, but Scully noticed that her eyes were sparkling, that she seemed to relish talking about it. How much did she share of her adventure in the Goblin King's maze? Was she like Mulder, seemingly uncaring if she was believed or not? Or was she more cautious than that, keeping her own secrets close to her breast? And most of all, the lie of it...the lie of it was in her eyes, in the way they gleamed. No rational being could love something that was a hell, and yet as Sarah spoke, those green eyes of hers betrayed either a kind of childhood joy in the magical – or else something deeper. So either the lie was in her eyes or on her lips, and Dana wondered which it was. Perhaps a bit of both.

Sarah stood and clapped her hands together. "I'm going to pack some string, some snacks, water...um, what do you have, Agent Scully?"

Scully patted the pockets of her suit; besides her standard issue sidearm, she had a small pocket flashlight, her pen and pad, as well as a pair of handcuffs and her briefcase. "Unless you want plane tickets back to D.C., this might be it."

The girl gave a wry smile. "We'll make it work anyway. I know I've got a hip pack someplace..." Thus saying, she opened the door. "Okay, you guys, we're ready!"

…

Mulder gathered that Hoggle didn't like him very much, but he didn't take it personally. The dwarf had stomped his way into the kitchen (he seemed to know exactly where he was going, how long had Miss Williams been shuttling inter-dimensional beings into her apartment?), fished a step stool from between the refrigerator and the counter, set it up against the fridge, and yanked a pint of butter pecan ice cream out of the freezer. And he did not offer to share with the special agent, either, smacking his lips against his spoon, gruff voice grumbling in his throat all the while. Fox smiled to himself and left the fairytale whatever to his snacking, taking a turn about the apartment the way his partner just had while they'd awaited their tea.

Mulder didn't focus on family portraits and books the way Scully did, his interest immediately drawn by the dark space between titles on the shelf. The man flicked his tongue against his lip eagerly, not hesitating to dip his hand into the dark shadow on the bookshelf, pausing when he touched something cool. A smooth feeling, like resin; Fox's fingers found purchase on some jutting edge of the mystery object and pulled it out – too quickly, though. Without it there to balance the books, the entire row leaned to the right with a loud slump.

Mulder sat back on his haunches, turning the object in his hands over, gently blowing dust from the surface. A statue? A doll? On a heavy, lead-filled base, a mythic man stood with one arm arched over his head, his dark cape billowing forever in a breeze no one else would ever feel. From the straight line of his lapels, to the shine of his boots, to the tightness of his breeches, there was no doubt in the federal agent's mind: this was a statue of the-

"Take yer paws off that!" Before Fox could react, Hoggle had come racing over on his stubby legs and smacked the doll straight out of his hands. The thing hit the carpet with a dull thud, and Mulder winced, wondering if that wouldn't bend or break it. "Snoopin' around like its yer own personal property..."

"Sorry," the man offered with a half-apologetic smile, gathering up the doll and righting the books so as to slide it back into its dark, dusty home. "Is that a statue of the Goblin King?"

"So what if it is?"

"It just seems a bit strange to have a statue of someone you say you don't like."

"Don't see what business it is of yours," the dwarf grumbled, waving his spoon close to the man's face; Mulder put up one palm in an offering of peace.

"Just a bit curious, that's all."

"Well, don't be! Sarah don't need no more trouble than she's already got."

"Is Sarah in trouble, Hoggle?" Mulder stood up to his full height, but if he thought he might intimidate the little man, he was sorely mistaken. Hoggle glared up at the stranger with sharp, cold eyes and crossed his arms before he responded.

"She will be, goin' back t'the Underground. Why'd you have to go stickin' your big nose in it anyway?"

"Who's got a big nose?"

Hoggle made some unclear noise, something like a, "rar," and stormed back to his ice cream, shoving spoonfuls into his gaping mouth. "That Jareth won't give her no rest, he won't, not once he smells her back in the Labyrinth. And what's worse, that place will-" He stopped, suddenly wide eyed, and sucked at his spoon a little more thoughtfully.

Just like his namesake, Fox's ears pricked. "What?"

Around a mouthful of butter pecan, Hoggle muttered, "I didn't say nothin'."

"What will that place do?"

The bedroom door opened, Sarah's dark head just visible from the jamb. "Okay, you guys, we're ready!" She gave a winning smile as Hoggle grumbled and put away the ice cream, her green gaze fixed on the other man in her apartment. "I'm afraid I don't have anything to outfit you with, Agent Mulder."

"I'll be comfortable enough."

"I'm going to grab some things out of the kitchen, then we can go. Just a second."

Mulder glanced from the dark space on the bookshelf to Sarah in the kitchen, the young woman shoving protein bars into pockets and filling up a polyurethane bottle with water. With the slightest of smiles on his full lips, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and began a slow swagger into the kitchen. "Miss Williams...do you mind if I ask you a question?"

She glanced up at him through the curtain of her hair, smiled. Hoggle was glaring at the special agent. "You can call me Sarah, Agent Mulder. And sure, shoot."

"That statuette on your bookcase-"

The damp bottle slipped from Sarah's fingers. "Shit!" Water began gurgling all over the sink and she quickly righted the bottle to refill it. "I-I'm sorry, what was that?"

"That statue you have – of the Goblin King."

"You think it looks like him?" Young Miss Williams turned off the tap, screwing on the bottle's thick lid before drying it with a dishtowel. "I never thought the resemblance was all that canny."

Mulder's smile widened at the corner into a larger smirk. "It's close enough."

"Well – what about it?"

"I'm just curious as to where you got it."

"My mother gave it to me, if you must know," Sarah huffed slightly, turning and going to a hall closet, digging around for her hip pack. "She was always giving me knickknacks."

"Was? I'm sorry for your loss."

"Oh, my mom's still around," the actress corrected, standing and hooking the small, black pack around her hips. "She just gives me gift cards now. Sometimes jewelry, perfume."

"How very thoughtful."

Sarah shrugged. "I don't know how well acquainted you are with the theater, Agent Mulder, but my mother's an actress – Linda Williams." The special agent blinked, so the girl sighed and continued on. "Well, in this town, she's a big deal, and she's been in some big Hollywood films as well. She's a star, I'm an ingenue. She doesn't always have time for me."

"Must be rough."

"I made peace with that a _long_ time ago." Sarah hooked the bottle through an elastic strap; it bounced against her thigh, the water cool through the plastic. "I was really into fantasy as a kid; she encouraged that, gave me trinkets, odds and ends. That statue's one of the things she gave me. That's why I still have it."

"But gathering dust in the darkest part of a shelf...?"

"I don't know how _you_ decorate, but I needed something to prop up my books. And as sentimental as I am, that's hardly a Bernini. The bookshelf is a fine spot for it." Sarah patted herself all over, as though she was merely checking she had her keys. "Are you ready to go?"

Mulder nodded. "I am."

"Hoggle, we're going!"

"I'm comin', I'm comin'," the old dwarfish thing groused, toddling back to the woman's bedroom. Scully was just pulling her hair back in a short, red ponytail. Mulder smiled at her, a little mysteriously, she thought.

Sarah sat before her vanity, as though mentally prepping herself. Eyes closed, she sighed, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..." Scully exchanged a glance with her partner; why did she get the feeling this was a bad idea? "Well, come on." She slid her hand against the smooth surface of the glass.

It passed through.

…

Scully wanted to be very scientific about this: jotting down notes was impractical, but she wanted to at least record sensations, landscape, sights, smells, sounds. She wanted to transcribe what it felt like to pass through a mirror, a physical object (unless it wasn't, unless it was actually a clever optical illusi- oh, never mind) – but the sad truth was...she couldn't. There was no feeling at all. If pressed to describe it, all she would have been able to say was that it was very much like passing from one room into another, perhaps even less so. There was no sense of walking through a door, of light or shadow. One moment they were in the bedroom of Sarah Williams, twenty three, of Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan; and in the next moment, they were someplace else.

Agent Scully didn't even have time to be stumbling or confused. As soon as she blinked and caught sight of the new world around her, she also felt her partner's fingers wrapping around either of her elbows from his position behind her. " _Trans-dimensional travel, Scully_!" Mulder was hissing excitedly into her right ear. "Think of the implications – the possibilities! How much _space_ does the Underground take up? At what points are we connected with it? Does it have other neighbors? Is it like a worm hole, a tunnel? Can we pass _through_ it, and what would we find if we did-"

"I can tell you one thing," Dana sighed, blowing a loose lock of hair from her face when it fell from her small ponytail. "I wouldn't want to vacation here."

The reasons for that seemed perfectly obvious: the quartet stood on a small, dry hill, a dead and leafless tree their only company. Scully mused; _the lone and level sands stretch far away..._ Unlike Romantic verse, however, the dry, swirling sands here were red and gold, threaded through with bursts of glitter, as if precious stones had been ground to make the gritty sands that surrounded them. That might have made it seem beautiful, but it wasn't. Far off in the distance, Scully could see jagged mountains, but there was a kind of orange haze that kept her from knowing if they were snow capped or not. Everything just looked so _dead_ – and nothing more so than what awaited them at the bottom of the hill, the thing that stretched into the horizon like a sea of stone.

The twisting spires and corridors of the Labyrinth. Agent Scully felt her breath catch in her throat at the sight of it. _This_ was the perverse hell the Goblin King was putting children through? She imagined Anwer Ahmed, not twelve years old, trying to find his way through all _that_ , beset by the goblins she had more felt than seen before, in New York. Or would he be tortured by creatures like Hoggle, whatever he was? The special agent might have opened her mouth to ask Hoggle if he knew of the boy, if he knew of victims like Courtney Breckinridge or Benedict Pierce; but the dry, gritty air made her lungs seize for a moment and she coughed fiercely. Mulder lay his broad palm at her back, rubbing her through the borrowed, white shirt. Blinking back tears made thick with sand, Dana could _just_ catch sight of the center of the mad maze. A small, squat, brown village rose from the middle, but perched high above that was a castle. So far away they were, she could have pinched it between her thumb and forefinger, but she could still just make out rounded crenellations, banners whipping in the winds. The Castle Beyond the Goblin City...

Sarah was breathing deeply, as though this atmosphere was almost _homey_ to her. The breeze teased at her hair, sweeping it into her closed green eyes, but the girl just brushed it back without concern, ignoring the way it clung to her fingers with dry static. The dwarfish Hoggle was looking about nervously, thick fingers tapping together. "Well, if we're gonna go, we oughta _go_ already."

"Everything's fine, Hoggle, see?" the young woman assured, her smile brilliantly white in the tinted light of the hill. "No sign at all of-"

"Hello, _Sarah_."

Scully stumbled to the side slightly, caught by Mulder before she could lose her balance; the Goblin King had appeared right beside her. She hadn't been crazy, he _was_ real – either that, or she was crazy now. And he was exactly the same as he had been all those months ago! The same wild shock of platinum hair, the same strangely dilated blue eyes. Same tight pants, too, it seemed. This time they were black. They matched his black boots, the black leather breastplate he wore that was curled with strange markings, like goblin fangs and goblin horns, the special agent thought. The cape that whipped around him in the wind was also black, but was lined with sparkling blue, and he stood out like a beacon on the orange crest of that hill.

Mulder and Scully might as well not have been there, for all the notice the Goblin King was paying them. No, instead, he _leered_ over the young woman accompanying them, though her back was to him and her arms were crossed firmly over her soft, rounded chest. The fey creature's teeth were showing, and Dana wouldn't have been surprised if his sharp canines had dripped saliva onto Miss Williams' shoulders. "My, but it has been some time, hasn't it?"

Sarah didn't flinch, didn't blink, didn't flutter a muscle. "Eight years, Jareth."

"And the sweet little princess has grown into a lovely young woman, hasn't she? Fit to be a queen?" This man, this Jareth turned his hand, as though examining his nails through his (also black) leather gloves. "Tell me, Sarah, dear, do you still play dress-up in the park?" That did get the young woman's ire, she wheeled to face him, and he simply _grinned_ at her. Sarah's mouth closed, she would not rise to that bait. She scowled at her age old antagonist. "Oh, but you turned dressing up into a _career_ , now, didn't you? So mature, so worldly, Miss Sarah Williams."

"I didn't come here to prove myself to a baby snatcher."

The King snorted, most un-regally. "Please, that's _precisely_ why you came here."

Sarah ignored him. "I hear you've been hunting outside of your league, _Jareth_."

"Sarah, darling," he drawled, blue eyes half hooded, as though he were both vaguely insulted _and_ amused. "You will find that _nothing_ is outside my league. To what do I owe the indescribable pleasure of your company?"

"About that." Mulder at last stepped forward, still smiling, having the _grandest_ of times while his partner tried to process everything logically and sensibly – to very little avail. "Goblin King – we're here to investigate the disappearance of Senator Daniel Beau-"

The first noise Scully heard was the sharp intake of her own breath; there had been no more warning than that, she hadn't even seen the fairytale man's _arm_ move. But it must have, for before anyone could even _blink_ , his gloved hand had shot out and seized her partner by the thick point of his throat. Mulder choked on a lack of air. " _Agent Mulder_." The King's purr was like gravel. "When last we met, it was in your realm and you could act as you chose. That is very much not the case here." The fey man seemed genuinely angry, he turned flaming blue eyes on Mulder as he clawed at his gloves. "You did not come here as my guests, you did not make the sacred exchange – no, you snuck in through the backdoor, like a thief in the night!"

"Jareth, stop it!" Sarah boldly grabbed for his gloved hands, her fingers attempting to slide between the leather and the federal agent's neck. "You're such a freaking psycho, stop it, you'll hurt him!"

At the girl's touch, the fey king released the man, examining his hand in the place where she had touched him, almost as though he were burned by her. His lips were slightly pursed, slightly parted, his eyes just a hint foggy as he gave his thumb and palm careful scrutiny; but then he looked up, and he smiled at her again. " _Sarah_ ," Jareth cooed, tucking both his hands behind his back, one grabbed at the wrist. "Tell me, have you missed me, precious thing?"

"You try to choke a man, and then you ask me if I _missed_ you?"

"You make the question seem illogical."

There was the briefest of pauses, but then the actress tilted her soft, round nose into the air, arms crossed all over again. "No, I haven't."

Jareth equally paused, his eyebrows twitched up just a moment. With no more notice than that, he gave a gay sigh of, "Ah well! Dainty, dazzling Dana!" and he turned toward Agent Scully, who had been checking her partner's neck as he slowly recovered. She stumbled slightly from the sudden notice, and the Goblin King seized her left hand in his, bending over it. "I know _you_ will be more charitable to me, my most delicious, delectable, _darling_ woman." Scully thought he meant only to kiss her hand, but instead he absolutely _licked_ it with the full of his tongue.

"Ugh!" The federal agent swiftly yanked her hand back, rubbing it on Sarah's borrowed jeans. "That's disgusting, what is wrong with you?"

The King sighed, the back of his glove pressed against his forehead. "Love, sweet Scully! Was ever a man more cruelly abused than in his rejection from the woman he holds most dear? What say you, Little Fox?"

Mulder's voice was little more than a wheeze. "Yeah, sure..."

"Your Majesty." Agent Scully was standing at her full five feet three inches of height, hands clenched fists at her sides. Her blue eyes burned, she seemed positively _livid_. For a man claiming such devotion, the Goblin King barely even glanced at her. "I'm sorry your feelings are so very sensitive over the bet _you lost_ -"

Jareth's hackles raised, his teeth were bared. " _Lost_? You mean the wager where you so scurrilously cheated, swindled, and-"

"-but we are agents of the United States government and we are investigating a very serious disappearance in the Aboveground – if we could have your cooperation, _please, sir_."

Jareth paused. He snorted. "Well, do you see that, dearest Sarah? How far a little _kindness_ and _respect_ will take you?" The King sighed, he twisted his wrist and a crystal danced over his lithe fingers. "Very well, decorous Dana. What do you wish to know?"

Scully huffed slightly, her fingers twitched with her desire to produce her pen and notepad, but that would do her little good here. "Do you know the whereabouts of Senator Daniel Beaumont."

Jareth smirked. "I do."

The female agent sighed, managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. "And could you _share_ that information with us?"

The smirk widened into a smug grin, and the crystal rolled up his arm, only to slide back down again and hop graciously to the tips of his fingers. "Well, since you asked _so sweetly_..." The crystal disappeared with a short _pop_! "He's here, in the Underground."

"How did the Senator come to be here?"

"Oh, a very old deal of ours, I daresay he'd entirely forgotten."

"Goblin King, the unlawful detainment of any individual against their will is-"

"Oh, _stop it_." The King's amused mood was gone, his thin lips lifted over sharp teeth, and he seemed every inch the predator Scully remembered him as. "Must we go through all this rigmarole again? You _know_ I do not care for your petty, mortal laws, so spare me your righteousness!"

"Jareth." Sarah stepped half an inch closer, and the Goblin King's eyes were drawn to her, as though she burned like a beacon. Sarah's own green gaze was firm and unwavering. "We'll do this the old fashioned way; let us run the Labyrinth for the senator."

His Majesty snorted again. "No."

The girl hesitated. "...No? That's it?"

"Why should I indulge you thus?" he asked, stepping behind the young woman with smooth, near-soundless motions, twirling idly as though he were engaging her in dance. Agent Scully thought that, perhaps, he was, of a kind. "You fraternize with my most traitorous subjects-" he spared a withering glance for Hoggle, who quickly ducked behind tall Agent Mulder. "You sneak into my most sacred dominion; you had nothing to do with our agreement, and moreover, you've _beaten_ the Labyrinth before, which gives our dear Agents Mulder and Scully a distinctly unfair advantage." His tongue clucked against the back of his teeth three times. "Oh no, no, no, my sweet Sarah. You have not convinced me _at all_."

Miss Williams was glaring at him. "What are we supposed to do, wager our souls against you? Don't be an ass, Jareth."

"I see your manners haven't improved much in eight years..."

"Straight talk, Your Majesty: what do we have to do to win back the senator?"

The Goblin King paused, his thin fingers against the sharp point of his chin. He spared quick glances for Mulder and Scully, but all his attention was on Sarah Williams. The girl was as steel, though, she did not shrink away from that gaze. After a time, he grinned at her. "What indeed..." the fey man purred, taking a careful step toward his favorite adversary. "I suppose you have won me over, precious Sarah. For how can I deny you anything, when it means you'll spend more time here, in my kingdom? I suppose I could be generous..." The gloved fingers of his left hand threaded through her dark hair at the temple. Sarah's lips parted in surprise; she half moved to pull away from him, but likewise, half did not, as though rooted to the spot. Before she could react to the King's caress, his forefinger and thumb pinched around a single thread of her hair – and pulled.

"Ouch!" The Williams girl covered the sore spot against her head, mouth open with shock. "Why, you son of a-"

"This," the Goblin King was continuing, mien very regal; a key appeared between the fingers that were not holding the strand of Sarah's dark hair. "Is the key to the prison I keep my old friend the senator in." He threaded Sarah's hair through a hole in the key, tying the free ends behind his neck. The whole thing lengthened and strengthened according to his will, forming a necklace that hung next to the pendant at his sternum. "And since this is a piece of Miss Sarah Williams, only she can retrieve it." He leaned forward on the balls of his feet. "By getting quite _close_ to me..." His lips were inches away from Sarah's, and she was too surprised to back up. "Feel free to make that happen at any time at all, precious thing."

Miss Williams woke up, shaking her head and blinking her green eyes. "Keep dreaming, Goblin King."

"Oh, you have _no idea_ about my dreams, sweet Sarah," he purred once more, standing straight. "As for the rest of you," he addressed the agents and their dwarven guide with considerably less warmth. "If you're so intent on finding me, I shall be relaxing in my Castle. I warned you about the Labyrinth, but you just _had_ to keep pushing it." His lips briefly curled in a sneer. "Well, no matter." He resettled the cloak at his shoulders, looking very otherworldly, very powerful – very _frightening_. "May the best man win, as the saying goes, eh, Little Fox? Adieu, sweet babes in the wood – and _Sarah_..." With no more warning than that, he disappeared from the ether around them, and Scully blinked, trying to make sense of the situation.

After a moment, Mulder sighed, running a rough hand through his limp hair. "I've got to be at least ten years older than you," he addressed Sarah, who blinked at him in surprise. "Exactly why am I 'the babe?'"


	4. Chapter 4

A.N.: Sorry, guys; my family emergency continues, but hopefully I'll be back on track soon. Your patience and continued support is much appreciated.

She was younger than they and with considerably less training, yet Miss Williams seemed far less perturbed about the situation than the federal agents in her company. Scully was still gently rubbing at her partner's throat, scowling at the dark red marks – in the shape of fingers – that were appearing on the skin there. Sarah turned to them and smiled; brightly, a smile that reached her eyes, without hesitation. "Well – are you two ready?"

The pair exchanged brief glances. "As ready as is possible."

"Then let's go! Come on, Hoggle." She took her friend's large hand, gently pulling him from around Mulder and started down the hill, not caring when the sand ran into her shoes or she threatened to trip on loose stones. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

"Sarah, you're plum out of your senses! It ain't too late t'go back, ya know-"

"Hoggle," she scolded gently while the special agents followed in her wake. "We _know_ the senator is here. How can we just leave him?"

"Very easily," the dwarf muttered, guiding his treasured friend around an algae-choked gazing pool. Scully's blue eyes were wide, the pupils small, and she registered _everything_ around them. Huge stone walls, equally dusted with glitter, that reached toward the sky; brambles, some with leaves and some without, clinging to the sides; clouds of what she assumed to be flies filling the air in shimmering clumps. Hoggle swatted at these with a snarl and mentioned something about spray. One thing she noticed _did_ disturb her – _there isn't any door in this wall._

They walked along the wall for several paces, Dana wondering all the while how it was they were to get in, when they seemed to find their destination, wherever that was: Hoggle had taken them to a rose garden, blooms of every sort in neat rows as beautiful as an English country garden – but in colors that could never have been seen in nature. There were, of course, deep reds and buttery yellows, but also one rose blue as the ocean, and another that was emerald green. Scully spotted one far away covered in polka dots, another striped with all the colors of the rainbow, and one that looked like it had been hammered from solid silver. This would have been enough to catch her breath, but it was hardly the strangest sight there.

She could see a feather, upright and bobbing between the rows – up and down, up and down, as though in a trot – until it turned a corner, and the hat it was attached to came into view. Only the hat was being worn by...a fox. A fox with an eye-patch astride a great big sheepdog. The federal agent gripped the bridge of her nose. "Mulder, you don't have that bottle of gin _on_ you, by chance?"

"I wish."

Sarah, however, was not at all perturbed. "Sir Didymus!"

"My lady!" Sprightly as a...well, as a fox, the creature (the talking, clothes-wearing, anthropomorphic creature) hopped from his mount, sweeping his feathered hat low to the ground before the young woman. "We are ever heartened by your presence!"

"Shut yer trap, Didymus, Sarah shouldn't be here t'all, don't encourage her none."

"Someone _please_ explain what is going on, before I conclude I've gone completely psychotic."

"It's okay, Dana," Sarah beamed at her as Didymus gallantly kissed her hand. "This is Sir Didymus, he's my-"

" _Sawah back_!"

"Oof!" Some giant, furry _thing_ had appeared from the rose garden as well, and swept the girl up in a seemingly-crushing hug. At least with Didymus ( _Sir_ Didymus? Who was knighting the animals of this psycho-Narnia?), Scully could identify him as fox-like. For this thing, she had _no_ such categories. The closest she could come up with a cross between a walking carpet and a bear. All the same, Sarah smiled, voice a little hoarse from the air being knocked out of her. "This is Ludo..."

"Sawah fwend..."

Dana managed a very meager smile while her partner walked around the Ludo with the notepad out of his jacket pocket, excitedly scribbling. "Nice to, um...meet you."

The Ludo's long, floppy ears perked up at seeing Scully, his wide mouth opened slightly. "Huh?" His large tail swept the earth and knocked into Fox's leg, and he turned and examined this new being as well. "Oh...Sawah?" There was the slightest of whines to his low, grumbly voice, and Scully was smiling in spite of herself; alright, not a bear. A cross between a walking carpet and a very dense hound.

"It's alright, Ludo," the young woman reassured, patting his huge, three-fingered hand. "This is Dana Scully and-" Mulder was holding one of Ludo's ears out to examine it more closely, nearly at an eye-level with the creature. The beast growled slightly and shook his head loose. Sarah sighed a little. "That's Fox Mulder. They're friends, too."

"Oh..."

"Say," Mulder smiled charmingly at Sarah – and to Scully's shock, the young lady actually _colored_. The Goblin King had practically been trying to put his tongue down her throat, but one of Mulder's manipulative smiles made her blush. There was just no telling the weaknesses of some people. "Could you get him to open his mouth? I'd love to know more about his dentition."

"Um..."

"Man and lady fwends?"

Scully awkwardly dried her palm against her pant leg and extended it toward the creature. "That's right, Ludo. Friends."

"Oh..." Ludo looked from Scully's hand (much smaller than his own) to her face – and promptly wrapped her in a huge embrace. The woman squeaked to be smothered in all that red fur; but he didn't smell as bad as she thought he might have. Less like a dog, more like powdered cinnamon. "People and Ludo fwends."

"Ludo likes having friends..."

"I can see that..."

" _Urgh_!" Hoggle was stamping his booted foot again. "If we're going, we oughtta go! Standing 'round here waitin' for Jareth's only gonna get us into more trouble!"

"Friend Hoggle is cor-r-r-rect," Sir Didymus concurred, rolling his Rs. He slid a paw between the shiny buttons of his striped doublet and pulled out a roll of parchment. "And in aid of this most noble quest, I have brought for thee, my dearest lady, a map." Didymus bowed before Sarah, his paws outstretched in offering.

Sarah smiled and took it. "Thanks, Didymus..."

Scully managed to extricate herself from Ludo's warm and fuzzy grip and looked over the girl's shoulder. "Wait a minute – you said the Labyrinth changes all the time."

"It does," she sighed. "So I'm not actually sure if this will help us or not."

"It _changes_?" Scully was unsure whether Mulder sounded disappointed or elated. "So we can't just take the route you used last time?"

"Well, _maybe_ ," the young woman murmured in reply, her tongue working the corner of her mouth. "But it wasn't exactly straight or logical. We could start out sorta the same way, but I don't know how long it would last. And this isn't the same entrance I used – I don't know if it's because we came through the mirror at a different point, or if that's just the way it is."

"Darned foolish this is!" Hoggle was insisting, yanking the piece of paper from their hands and flattening it on the ground. "Be much smarter to go straight back home."

"We can't do that," Mulder dismissed, kneeling in the dirt in his suit trousers. "But I think this could work for us after all."

"What'dya mean?"

"Well, look. These are the walls of the Labyrinth, right?" He indicated several brown lines on the map that were constantly shifting beneath his finger. "And that over there, that's the Fiery Forest?" Silvery lettering above a dark green splotch indicated this was so.

"So?"

"The pathways move, but the parts that make _up_ the Labyrinth stay the same."

Scully leaned against her partner's arm to get a closer look. "Which means as long as we know what section we're in, we should be able to navigate _toward_ the Castle."

"Argh!" Hoggle batted away Mulder's hands. "He was right t'call ya babes in the wood; dumb as a bunch of babies you are."

"Okay." Mulder settled back on his haunches. "What don't you like about _that_ plan."

"You think it's right simple, just walk one bit to the next. Well, it _ain't_. If the Labyrinth wants to keep you loopin' in a circle over and over, it will!"

"Well," Scully offered, the voice of calm reason as ever. "How do you navigate it?"

"I _don't_ ; I stay right where I'm put and I don't go wanderin' cause I've got a lick of _sense_."

"But you've done it before. Clearly it's not impossible."

Hoggle was not in the mood to be helpful or positive, however, and the argument continued; Sir Didymus wagged his staff and insisted that they must not abandon this most sacred quest; Ludo keened as he often did when his friends argued; Mulder and Scully continued to brainstorm the best way to find the senator, with or without fairytale assistance, and did their best to block out the noise, talking amongst themselves.

Sarah, however, was ignoring the whole mess of it. It could have been that she was simply used to the ruckus of her otherworldly friends, or her attention had been completely taken elsewhere. It was possibly a combination of the two, but she had turned away from the group, ostensibly to see if she couldn't find the Labyrinth's entrance this time – and then to examine the roses a little more closely. They really were beautiful, Sarah considered, a riot of colors and scents. She touched one that was milky white, and it was cool and like crystal to touch, crisp and sharp. The young woman sighed; it made sense the Goblin King would have roses like _that_ in his gardens. Sarah touched another. So red it was almost black, it felt like velvet against her fingertips, and the girl couldn't help herself. Mindful of the thorns, she pulled the blossom to her nose, inhaling deeply.

" _And the Tony goes to...Sarah Williams!"_

 _There was a roar of applause. Sarah startled, looking around at the packed auditorium. It was strange, but she could smell roses, and her mind must have been wandering because she felt like she'd been awakened out of a dream. Her manager was elbowing her, a grin as wide as the Hudson slapped on his face. "Sarah!" he hissed. "Go, girl, go! It's_ you _!"_

 _"Me?" She really must be in shock, clambering to her feet and trying to think of how to walk, trying to remember the words of her speech she'd practiced, just in case, in case this happened. All the lines she could memorize, and now she couldn't remember a single syllable from her acceptance speech. Her ankles were about to give out beneath her, these damn shoes-_

Sarah gasped, blinking back sunlight. Sunlight, and not stage lighting. Her head was swimming. She looked around her briefly, but the group was still arguing. Agent Mulder was insisting something to Hoggle ("-no one said you had to come anyway!" "You think I'd trust Sarah alone wit' _you_!") and she simply sighed. Wow. An out of body of experience, a waking dream, _something_ intense and pleasurable. She felt a tingle down to her toes and smiled, releasing the rose from her grip. Magic. Magic, oh, she'd _missed_ the Underground. Costumes and beautiful words on a stage was the closest Miss Williams had come to real magic in eight years, but this was a far more palpable, a more _intense_ experience. She wondered – did all of the roses do the same thing? Hungry, her fingers fixed on another stem, this one with petals each a different shade. Sarah's tongue wet her lips and she did not hesitate to take a long, satisfying sniff at the blossom.

 _"I've got salt and I've got tabs."_

 _"Are you screwing with me? Last week you had the good shit."_

 _"I'm not givin' you nothin' till I see the cash."_

 _Sarah was blinking in the dark, a cough rattling in her lungs, and she wondered where she was. She had a feeling it was a question she asked herself often. Money was exchanging hands, fairly thick wads of bills an angry-looking man was thumbing through. He didn't seem angry for any particular reason, more just a symptom of his own disease. Her ankles still felt like they were about to give way beneath her, only now it was because her shoes were much too small for her feet, and she could feel water creeping in through a hole in the bottom. God, she hoped it was water._

 _Her irate gentleman companion seemed satisfied. "Okay, fine. What do you want, a brick? Williams." She perked up slightly at her name. "He wants a brick."_

 _Sarah nodded, but was otherwise silent, lest her cough try to escape through her open mouth. It was so damn cold. Her fingers were stiff with chill as she fumbled with a black, plastic garbage sack. She could feel the eyes of the other man upon her, but this was nothing particularly new. "Where the hell'd you get her? She looks good."_

 _"She's new."_

 _"Hey, you sharing?"_

 _"I only share with my good friends."_

 _"How much do your good friends usually give you? Where did she come from anyway?"_

 _"Williams was going to act," the more familiar of the two men sneered at her, and her instinct was to crouch low to the ground and attempt invisibility. Instead, she just handed over the powder-filled sandwich bag to her supposed-employer. "Still does a bit."_

 _"Hey, I don't need to make no women act."_

 _"You wanna ask her yourself? I don't mind loaning her out for-"_

Sarah dropped the flower, breath ragged. A thorn must have pricked her, because she felt like her hands were burning and tears were springing to her eyes. What was that? What in the _hell_ was that? It wasn't true – whatever it was, it wasn't true, and she rubbed at her pained, green eyes with the back of her wrist. Her career was going quite well, and – whatever, that wasn't the point, she'd _never –_ and her father wouldn't have ever stood for her standing on a street corner with- Sarah looked around briefly. It was like no time had passed at all, Mulder and Scully were still pouring over the map. With desperate, shaking fingers, she grabbed at another rose and yanked it from its branch, this one as deep and purple as night. It wasn't real, it wasn't true, this flower would prove it, she was so _certain_. It smelled like musk and music, and darkness and dreams, and she felt it flooding through her system just like with the first rose; all pleasure, but all much deeper, a heady thrum that was quickly overwhelming her senses.

 _She was safe. For perhaps the first time in her life she was well and truly safe, and Sarah sank into the feeling, let it envelop her like a cloud, let it wrap around her shoulders. Any memories of safety from her past – snuggled in bed with her parents as a child, clutching Launcelot in thunderstorms – was an illusion compared to this. She was safe because someone would never let a thing harm her, and because she herself was too powerful to be hurt._

 _The air still had that particular scent to it, that musky sweetness that nearly put her in a swoon, and Sarah breathed it deeply, let it sigh across her lips. Whatever this moment was, it must be real, because she was looking out over the Labyrinth, and she felt like she had been doing that before. The view was a little changed, though: from here, the Goblin City was closest, and the winding halls of the Labyrinth far away...She was looking from the center outwards._

 _She hadn't heard the steps behind her, but she didn't startle when the pair of lithe hands fitted themselves at her hips. She melted slightly under the touch and looked down – black, leather gloves against her long, white dress. It was silky and sparkly and absolutely beautiful._ She _was absolutely beautiful. "Are you looking out over your kingdom, my sweet?"_

 _Sarah smiled, a hand drifting to cover the leather-clad ones. "Is it mine?"_

 _"We are one flesh now...What is mine is yours and yours is mine." She felt herself stifling a moan as a hot mouth fit to the crook of her throat, the tongue laving at her reddening skin. "But I would gladly give it all to you, my Queen."_

 _"Jareth..." Jareth? Jareth? Sarah's breathing came a little heavier. Something was and was not right. She turned slightly to face him, and – yes, the Goblin King took her arm and wrapped it around his neck, looking at her with...with...God, she couldn't think of the words to describe it. It was endless and amazing, the look that hung in his blue eyes. Why had she been stifling any noises he made her produce anyway? Sarah couldn't remember. Instead, his mouth crushed hers and she opened under it like a flower (like a flower, like a rose?), invited him in and reveled in how close they were. It wasn't enough, it wasn't enough. Her hands swept under his thick, blue jacket and began trying to push it off his shoulders._

 _He hummed inside her mouth, broke the kiss to her whining protests and obligingly slipped out of the coat. "You_ are _eager to consummate the union, aren't you, precious thing?" Sarah couldn't quite answer, her breath coming in heavy puffs and the tip of her tongue dabbing at her lower lip. "You don't have to worry..." His thumb brushed that lip, briefly connected with her tongue, and Sarah's green eyes were black and half-closed with want. "_ I feel the same as you _."_

 _He turned away from her then, his hands going to the buttons of his silk shirt, and Sarah gasped as it was pulled from off his shoulders. Her hands acted before her mind could, fingers reaching out and brushing her husband's left shoulder. "Jareth, you-" He hissed beneath her touch and arched his back slightly, and her arm quickly wrapped around his torso to steady him. "I'm sorry, have I hurt you?"_

 _"Not you, precious thing. Never you."_

 _"But there's a mark...here." Her fingers traced the jagged line that bisected his left shoulder blade. There was a deep, round scar, like a horrible puncture, and then it_ tore _, downwards. Like someone had tried to rip through him. "Oh, my poor Jareth, you poor thing..." She found herself kissing the blemish with rapt attention, tender and focused. "Who would want to hurt you."_

 _Her King turned and caught her up in his lithe, bare arms, and Sarah relished in his heat, his scent (was it musky, like the rose? Which rose was that?), the feel of him against her. "Yes, Sarah, pity me." His sharp nose nuzzled at her cheek bone and they were caught up with damp, preoccupying kisses for the next several heartbeats. "Kiss it all better, my sweet."_

 _"I would – I_ will _. Who did this to you?"_

 _"Oh, a very bad girl...Nothing at all like you, Sarah." His arm was fitting behind her knee, he was bending to scoop her into his arms. Her fingers latched onto the back of his neck instinctively and her heart began to pound. Oh God, what she'd been dreaming of since she was fifteen- "Let me show you how very good you are, precious thing..."_

 _"Yes, Jareth, I-"_

"What in the bleeding hell d'you think yer doin'!"

Sarah gasped, her heart pounding like she was about to have an attack. Hoggle had dashed the rose from her fingers and was stomping it into the dirt. "Hoggle!" Sarah protested, but her throat was _so_ dry.

"Ain't you got a lick of sense!" The poor gardener seemed fearful beneath his anger. "You ought to know better than takin' strange things from the Labyrinth!"

"I-It was just a flower!" Mulder and Scully were looking at her, eyes wide, lips slightly parted. They each held a side of the map and had apparently been studying it before this outburst. Instead, they were studying her, and the young woman was blushing fiercely.

" _Nothing_ in the Labyrinth is just anything! Nothin' is as it seems! Did you go forgettin' that already?"

Didymus was considerably softer than the rampaging dwarf, and his furry paw patted at Sarah's hand with marked gentleness. "Are you alright, my lady?"

"I'm _fine_. I was just smelling the rose-"

"What you were _doin_ '," her friend cursed, spitting on the flower that was reduced to pulp in the dust. "Was sniffin' at the Garden of What May Be."

"...the what?"

"It ain't no pretty rose garden what for just lookin' at. It's an _Underground_ flower, it's full of magic."

Scully cleared her throat. "Well, what does it do?"

Hoggle flicked his eyes in her direction, huffing with ire. "It shows you what may be, obviously. Things that could happen."

Sarah was taking a long, full sip of the water from her bottle, hoping no one noticed the way her hands were shaking. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand and asked, "Might happen? Or _will_ happen."

" _Might_. A body can get so wrapped up in seein' all the different futures they _never_ leave!"

"Hey," Mulder was grinning affably again, and Sarah visibly relaxed. "Does it show lottery numbers?"

"Think you're so clever," Hoggle was grumbling, and he stomped away from the flowers. "Well, I got you to the door, didn't I? And you got yer map. So are we leavin', or ain't we?"

Scully sighed, releasing the parchment and letting Mulder carefully fold it and tuck it into his jacket pocket. "We are." Sarah nodded and began striding for the door carved into the Labyrinth's walls – a door Scully would have _sworn_ had not been there when they first approached the garden. Didymus had mounted his steed and was riding toward the open gate, but Scully hesitated next to the younger girl. "Miss Williams." Sarah paused, looking at her with slightly watery green eyes. "Are you sure you're alright?"

Sarah managed a smile, but it seemed to Scully that it was thinner than the smiles that came before it. "I'm fine – and please, call me Sarah."

Dana nodded. "Sarah."

"Come on," she assured with a somewhat fuller smile. "There's a lot of Labyrinth to get through." And she turned and strode through the gate.


	5. Chapter 5

A.N.: Sorry for the lack of update last week, guys; the family emergency has continued and managed to spread (my mom's been in the ER three times in a week), so I just decided - rather than posting late - to give it a week off. Sorry again.

The Labyrinth. Scully was a little disappointed; the special agent looked left, she looked right, but all she saw on either side was stone corridors reaching as far as the human eye could see. There weren't even any significant landmarks – just vines and brambles and moss and more glitter, glitter, glitter. Well, really, she wasn't surprised. This fit the devious mind of the Goblin King she knew.

Miss Williams was smiling again, adjusting the way her pack hung about her waist. "Okay, so there are a few ground rules we should cover about the Labyrinth."

Mulder was slightly slack jawed, poking at a lump of fungus on the wall – and Scully cringed to see why; eye-stalks, like those of a crab or a snail, turned half in the direction of his probing finger, half at his face, and _glared_ balefully. She was definitely losing her mind. "All ears," Mulder mumbled, and his partner could almost see him debating internally whether he should try to collect a sample of the bizarre plant or not.

Sarah had begun taking them down the right-hand corridor, and the creature Ludo ambled along behind her, calm and docile as a dog. The girl turned and held up a finger. "Rule number one." Ludo startled slightly, and held up his own, large finger in imitation – though he had only three on each hand, so Scully wondered what he might do if the rules exceeded that. "Don't eat _anything_ in the Labyrinth unless it comes out of this pack here," and she patted the sack that hung from her hip. "I don't care if I picked something straight off a tree to give to you, don't do it."

Mulder was interested to note that Hoggle was absolutely _squirming_ while the young woman gave this directive. "Okay..." the special agent nodded. "Why's that?"

"You just can't trust it."

"What about water?" Dana ventured, which gave her companion pause.

"...I don't know. That should be fine – unless it comes from the Bog of Eternal Stench of course."

"The Bog of..." Scully half stopped in her tracks before a nudge from Fox got her going again. "I'm sorry?"

"Y'don't want to know..." the dwarf assured her with a sour mutter, and the woman figured that was probably sage advice.

"Rule number two," Sarah held up a second finger and Ludo followed suit. "Don't choose down."

Scully glanced at Mulder, but he was too busy running his fingers over the walls to see if the glitter would come away from the stones. "Choose down…when?"

"Anytime. Doesn't matter. Up is good, down is bad."

"Alright, fine…"

"And rule number three is the most _important_ rule of all." To emphasize her point, Sarah stopped walking and turned to face them, brows drawn in and mouth bent in a serious scowl. " _Never_ go left."

Mulder was finally paying attention, dusting his hands off on his suit trousers. "Why, what's left?"

Sarah just shrugged. "Certain destruction, horrible doom, I don't know and I don't want to ever find out. Never – go – left."

The agents caught one another's eye – and nodded. "Alright. No left."

The young woman was smiling again, the brightness back in her eyes. "Okay! This is gonna be a piece of cake!" (Hoggle groaned: "I wish you wouldn't say that…") With no more than that, Sarah turned back around and started walking, her left hand trailing the Labyrinth's wall. "So this first trick is a pretty good one; you have to find the opening in the- oh!" She stopped: the brick of the wall had _rippled_ under her touch, it made Didymus' steed dance nervously, Scully was taken slightly aback. "…Well, that was weird."

" _That_ was weird?" Mulder drawled, but he sounded so happy doing it that his partner had to look at him. "We're in another dimension, that's a talking fox-" he pointed to Didymus, "-and _that_ was the weird part?"

"I am a knight, good sir!"

"Well…" Sarah hesitated, drawing her hand away and rubbing at her fingertips. "I mean, you can get used to certain things." Scully thought that was pretty true, considering she was walking with "Spooky" Mulder. "It's just, that never happened before." It seemed to Scully that Hoggle was unusually silent for his normal grumblings, swollen face pale, almost as if he was in a cold sweat. "I don't see any reason to worry about it….Let's keep going." Which they did, for a few more paces, each stepping carefully over fallen branches, tangled vines and twisting tree roots–

Until another ripple occurred, this time along the pitted, stone ground, so that the roots moved obligingly out of the way – but only for Sarah. Scully had to stop Mulder from falling over when one such branch moved back in to place right in front of his feet. "That is more than just a little weird."

"I don't understand!" Sarah rested one hand on a wall and the entire thing shivered, as though it were somehow pleased by the touch, and she quickly drew back again. "This has never happened before, I don't know what's going on!"

"Friend Hoggle!" Didymus vaulted off his dog, brandishing his staff. "Didst thou not _tell_ the lady?"

There was that sick, guilty look again… "I-I was gonna!"

"Tell me what, Hoggle." Sarah's hands had moved to her hips, a lock of hair falling into her eyes; a vine from the wall immediately moved forward to brush it back and Sarah startled away from it, cutting her chin on a jagged corner of brick. "Ow!"

"Well…it's just, y'know…you're the Champion of the Labyrinth."

"Yeah…" she said slowly, touching a finger to the small, bloody mark and wincing. "That part I have covered."

The small creature huffed slightly. "So you beat it wit' yer own power – and that's what the Labyrinth responds to! Power."

Scully scrambled over a particularly thick trunk of a tree to get to the girl. Sarah was taller by nearly half a foot, and the doctor had to tilt her chin down to see it properly. "Hold still – it's not too bad, give me the bottle and I'll flush it."

Mulder stood by the dwarf, bending at the knees. "More specifically, you're saying the Labyrinth loves her? Is that it?"

" _What_?" Sarah's green eyes were wide, but Scully was already shushing her, dabbing water over the wound.

"Let's not get carried away."

"Well…." Hoggle scuffed his shoe into the dirt, and Mulder's gaze intensified.

"Well, is that it or isn't it?"

The walls, meanwhile, were undulating more than ever, seemingly distraught to have wounded the young lady; vines with white flowers tucked at their ends were shooting out, were smoothing down her long, dark hair, were touching her chin gently. It was all Sarah could do to wave them off. "I'm not here to get _wooed_ , I just want to get through the Labyrinth!" Eagerly, the section of wall now on her right collapsed obligingly, so that Sarah might step over, rather than find every tortuous turn. "What in the-"

"Aurgh!" Hoggle made a slightly tortured sound. "Alright, so the Labyrinth wants you to stay! There was a reason I told you not to come!"

"You weren't too eager to mention that before coming, though," Mulder drawled.

"You bite your tongue, ya tall lummox!"

Sarah, however, was putting her foot down. "I am _not_ staying here." There was a very deep moment of quiet, in just the split moment she had said that, as if the world was now collectively holding its breath-

Right before the ground beneath both Sarah and Scully opened up like a black tube. And they went down, down, down, down….A short scream, nothing more, and the two were swallowed into the earth, with naught but a gaping pit remaining.

Ludo was howling. Mulder had scrambled forward, knocking debris out of his way, shouting, " _Scully! Scully, are you alright!_ "

"Never mind the red-headed hussy – Sarah!"

Didymus was pointing his nose down the hole. "My lady! Be thee injured, or be thee well!"

Hoggle reared back from the pit and aimed a kick right at the special agent's shin. It staggered the man enough that he nearly lost his balance and went tumbling in as well. "Argh, now you've gone and done it! Look what you did!"

"What _I_ did?"

"You just had to push, didn't ya? Sarah wouldn't be here 'tall if you didn't put ideas in her head to bring her back!"

" _You're_ supposed to be her friend, _you_ were the one who didn't tell her the full truth. Stop that," Mulder huffed, and he put a broad hand on the dwarf's head, holding him at arm's length even as he thrashed. "Where do those pits go, they go somewhere, don't they?"

"To the oubliette, stupid!" he growled in return, as rocks and stones vibrated with Ludo's continued cries. "Where else?"

"And how do we _get_ to the oubliette?" Fox bent down and put his other hand on Hoggle's shoulder, eyes intense. "We have to get them back – and the only way we're going to do _that_ is if we work together, right?"

Hoggle was glaring, but Didymus had calmed Ludo and was brandishing his staff with a flourish. "Sir Mulder is r-r-right!" his Rs trilled off his tongue. "Only if we band together might we save the maidens fair!"

Mulder chuckled slightly, rising back to his full height with a bit of a groan. "Well, Scully's no maiden – but the point still stands. Let's go."

…

Two hard _thuds_ , the cracking sound of dried boards snapping, bones dancing across the stone floor, the creak of rusted iron grating – and they were alone, in the dark. _Quick – all extremities moving? Any pain?_ No, not really, at least not yet. She seemed to be alright. Somewhere in the dark was a weak coughing sound. "Sarah?"

"I'm here…" The call wasn't much better, but it was at least there. Scully gave a small sigh of relief, digging in her pocket for her tiny flashlight. The light it gave off was anemic, but it was better than nothing at all. In the pale, white glow, brown stones came into view, and the dusty, disheveled form of the young woman. "Are you alright, Dana?"

"I seem to be. What happened?"

"I guess the Labyrinth was more serious about keeping me than I thought…" With a groan, she rolled herself to her knees. "We're in the oubliette."

Scully startled slightly. "A dungeon?"

"Yeah. But there should be a door here someplace…" Sarah crawled forward a pace, bumped her chin into a wall, and stopped, whimpering.

"Slow down." Scully reached her free hand forward and tried to shine the light in the direction she wanted to go. "Let's get all our ducks in a row. I don't see any doors in here."

"You have to make them…" Sarah's chin was now bleeding afresh. "I can't believe I was so stupid…"

"You haven't done anything wrong." Scully carefully flushed the wound again and dabbed at it with the sleeve of the borrowed shirt. "We'll get out of here. Mulder wouldn't just leave us."

Sarah sighed, carefully feeling her way over the dirt and stray boards. "Have you known him a long time? Shine the light this way, please."

Scully obliged, the weak beam catching flashes of glitter in the darkness. "More than a year."

"You seem really close already."

"I guess you can say that. We've been through a lot together."

"Here it is!" Sarah lifted what looked to be a door torn off its hinge, balancing it on her shoulder and bracing it against the wall. "Depends on which way you open it…" Scully opened her mouth to protest, but the young woman had already pulled it open, as though it were connected on an actual jamb – and a small, dark tunnel now burrowed into the wall. "Crap. It's practically a mouse hole." She shut the door, tried the other direction, but only had rotten linens fall on to her. Dana remained motionless through all this, as if choosing not to engage in something that her mind could not physically comprehend. Sarah went back to the first position, and reopened on the narrow tunnel. "Guess this is it, Dana."

"Excuse me?"

"Here, let me see that thing." She carefully took the flashlight from the woman and shined it down the tunnel. "It looks like it widens up ahead. I think we can make it." She handed the flashlight back to her and smiled, though it was hard to see in so much dark. "Hope you're not claustrophobic." The girl shimmied ahead into the tunnel, and Scully had no choice but to follow, tucking the flashlight at the top of the shirt to give them some kind of guiding light. It was hot and dusty, and Scully found herself wondering what Mulder was doing on the surface, how he was looking for them, how he would fare with Sarah's….friends. But her partner was resourceful, surely it would be alright?

Sarah was right, it did get a little wider, so that soon they were off their knees and standing again – but it was just as dusty, and just as dark. Scully's flashlight could only illuminate a foot or so ahead of them, and Sarah sighed. Dana jumped slightly at the feel of the other woman's fingers on her arm. "Here, hold my hand." It was said gently, the voice of someone very young. "I want to make sure we stay together." Their hands gently intertwined, and they carefully began moving forward, free hands outstretched to keep their balance. Sarah tripped a little once and Scully pulled her closer to keep her from falling over. "What sort of things have you been through?"

"What?"

"You said you've been through a lot together." Sarah carefully brushed her palm against one smooth, sandstone wall. "What sort of things?"

"They're…difficult to explain. I, um…" She struggled to find a way to word abduction, altercations and armed assault. She went simple instead: "My father died last year. Mulder was very sympathetic."

"Oh, I'm sorry." She could feel Sarah's green eyes on her even without seeing them. "It must be a great help having him, then."

It seemed an odd phrase, but it wasn't inaccurate. Scully nodded her assent. "It is."

"And I imagine it's nice, too – getting to work with your boyfriend."

"My-" Dana stopped and the younger woman came to a halt as well when their arms went taut. She scoffed a little. "Mulder isn't my – he's not my _boyfriend_."

"Oh, really?" She could just make out Sarah's head listing to the right. "I thought-"

"It's not like that."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it."

But why was she getting so tense? It was just a silly mistake. She shook her head and started walking again. "No, of course not. Don't apologize, please."

There was a companionable silence after that, and the tunnel seemed to lighten incrementally. It was then that Sarah hazarded in an intrigued tone of voice, "…does that mean Agent Mulder is single?"

"Is he-?" Scully almost stopped again, but was able to keep herself moving this time. "I…haven't heard otherwise."

"Really." Sarah's smile was becoming clearer by the moment – self-possessed, private, maybe even a little hopeful. Scully could hardly believe it. "He's kind of cute, isn't he? He's been awfully sweet."

"He's quite a bit older than you are."

But the young lady just snorted, pushing a loose lock of hair out of her face. "Yeah, well, I've already had plenty of 'romantic' dealings with much _older_ men."

"Yes….forgive me if it's too personal a question, but…what is the past between you and the Goblin King? I mean that he's so attached to you."

She could feel Sarah's cheeks burning even if she couldn't see them. "I-I don't know, I mean-" She gave a slight huff. "I was just a teenager when this whole stupid thing happened; I thought I was Cinderella with a wicked step-mother. I told myself stories about…" She paused a moment, and it made Scully stop in her tracks as well. "'But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the girl.'"

"I beg your pardon?"

"He was perfect." Sarah's voice was very quiet, almost a whisper in the dark. "I thought he was perfect, for what I wanted then. B-but I grew up! I'm not that little girl anymore!" They stood there in the silence of the blackness, and Scully regretted having asked, feeling her companion's distress. A rumble down the tunnel broke the quiet. It startled the agent, who braced for a cave in – or something even worse, but it made Sarah smile, and she perked up considerably. "Oh, good! Look, Dana, we're close now!"

…

Mulder was being overcome by a familiar feeling of frustration with the map spread out before him on his lap. He had prepared, he had immediately deduced where the Senator had gotten to, and yet somehow the Goblin King was still ahead of him. How was it possible, how was it right? He looked at the map and watched the walls shiver and move in a pattern like a kaleidoscope. A surface map….now what he needed was a subterranean one. He hadn't counted on that – and that was what Jareth had planned for, wasn't it?

And now Scully was missing because of it.

Ludo was still howling, and rocks and bricks were beginning to roll. It got Mulder's attention and he got to his feet, folding the map and tucking it into the inner pocket of his jacket. "Alright, alright, that's enough of that, Snuffleupagus." Ludo canted his head to the side, wide mouth hanging open and murmuring, "Uh?" Mulder patted his furry chest. "That's not going to help get them back, is it?"

"Oh….no." He shook his head and his fluffy ears flopped back and forth into his face.

"So we can't just sit here and howl. We've got to do something." The agent turned then and slid his hands into his pockets. "I bet Hoggle has an idea."

"What?" The dwarf was peering into the hole and nearly lost his balance. "Me?"

"You know the Labyrinth better than anyone, don't you?"

"Think you're going to butter me up, is that it?"

"It doesn't matter now." Mulder bent at the knees and was on eye level with the little man, a very serious look to him. "Whether we get the Senator back or not isn't the issue – the girls are missing, and we _have_ to find them." The little gardener couldn't meet his gaze. "Isn't that right, Hoggle?"

Didymus answered for him, jumping forward and barking. "Just so! I am not afraid, Sir Mulder! But show me an opponent and I shall tear him to pieces to rescue yon maidens! I shall rip him limb from limb! I shall duel him in honorable and glorious combat, and-"

"Alright, Don Quixote." He ruffled the fox's fur and stood back up to his full height. "Let's slow down. How do we get to the oubliette?"

"By what name didst thou call me?"

"The tunnels," Hoggle muttered, starting off without the other three down a path Mulder hadn't even seen before. "But they could be in any bloody pit the Labyrinth pleases."

"Then we just have to try them all." Mulder caught up to him with a few long strides, Ludo ambling after and Didymus making quick work on his sheepdog steed. "How do we get to the tunnels."

Hoggle just huffed, rolling his eyes as Mulder dug the map back out of his jacket pocket. " _Now_ you're thinkin' bout that, weren't in too much of a hurry when it came to startin' this idiotic adventure." Mulder said nothing in reply; frankly, it sounded a little like something Scully might say to him. "Easiest way's through the hedge maze. Depends on where they went, but it's a guess."

"A maze within a maze…" Mulder sighed, glancing at the map before folding it again. "This place is something else." As the brick walls and dead trees gave way to the living shrubbery, the Labyrinth seemed less nightmarish. The eye fungus was replaced by more flowers like the roses in the Garden of What May Be, and other plants, too, which would be impossible for Mulder to name, even if he had a better understanding of botany. It was becoming a twisted English garden, full of statuary and fountains. In one corner a massive toy soldier; in another, a suggestively proportioned likeness of Pan. Obelisks stood at every intersection, and it was well that the little gardener knew his way, because Mulder couldn't keep heads or tails of anything, even if the walls didn't move. Everything – the sights, the scents, the sounds – overwhelmed him. But rising above all of it in the distance, set upon a hill, was the unmistakable silhouette of the Goblin King's lair. The Castle Beyond the Goblin City.

At a garden shed, the dwarf stopped, nodding to himself with fat fingers on his chin. "This oughter do. Come on, then, ya tall freak."

Mulder wasn't listening to the insults, though; his gaze was still fixed on the Castle. "Hoggle. He lives there, doesn't he?"

"What?" He glanced where the agent looked and just rolled his eyes. He opened the door and it looked entirely normal, a large clay pot set in one corner. "You got any other dumb questions for me?"

"Just one. Are the towers supposed to be shaped like a peni-"

He didn't get to finish. Between him and the shed, a cloud of glitter exploded like a landmine. Hoggle dove into the pot's hole that led into the tunnels, desperate not to be seen. Didymus set to barking. Mulder started back, but was confronted once again by the _furious_ visage of the Goblin King. He hadn't been this close to his face since the hotel room when the man had practically spit over him. Mulder was still the taller of the two, but Jareth seemed to take up even more space in his rage. Black clouds were rolling in, thunder clapped in the middle distance, and now there was a sudden threat of rain.

Fox didn't get to say anything, the fey was speaking first. "You are to _stay away_ from Sarah, Fox Mulder, do you hear me?" Not even his derisive nickname this time; perhaps he actually felt threatened, but by what, Mulder could not begin to fathom. "You are in my domain now: I could trap you here and no one would ever know. I could make you never mourned, never missed, _nothing_."

But all this speech did was give Mulder hope. His chest expanded, his shoulders straightened. "We're close, aren't we? That's what's got you so upset, isn't it?"

"You are an _idiot_." Didymus was now busy calling his dog, who had run off at the first sight of the fearsome king. Ludo wasn't moving. Mulder was basically alone with his foe. "A fool if you think for a moment I'd tolerate the suit of another man."

"A…what?" Mulder stepped back, trying to catch his breath.

"Sarah belongs to _me_ -"

"She belongs to herself."

"-She is _my_ prize, _my_ bride, and you forget that to your peril." For his step back, the Goblin King stepped forward. His teeth had never looked sharper, his eyes never more wildly unstable. Not even in the hotel when he thought to triumph. "The promise of my lips upon her skin, my hand against her hand, have made her mine, and mine, and mine!" He looked like he would seize his presumed opponent, their faces mere inches apart – but a sound from the garden shed stopped him.

The voice of women, coming up the tunnel path…

Jareth's head turned. Mulder lunged for him – to what purpose, he didn't know, but he had to press some advantage. It was for naught; Jareth caught sight of him from the corner of his eyes and disappeared back into nothingness before the agent could touch him. Mulder plowed straight into the jamb of the shed door. " _Remember what I told you, Little Fox_." It echoed around them and Ludo began to whimper again.

Mulder was seething, rubbing his shoulder where it had slammed into the shed. "He is a…a paranoid, over-inflated, compensating…birdbrain!"

Hoggle's head popped up from within a flower pot, only his eyes and nose visible. "Shut up, you idiot, he'll hear you!" There was another noise of women speaking down below and experimentally, he called, "Sarah! That you!" At a faint reply, his eyes lit up, and he made to go straight down the little gopher hole himself – but he paused and gave Mulder an appraising look. "And yes, t'castle's _supposed_ to look like that."


	6. Chapter 6

A.N.: Thank you for your continued patience, I know I made you guys wait EXTRA long this time. My mother is mostly well, but I had an emergency trip up to Seattle to see my aunt, who miraculously survived her experimental surgery, which was itself miraculous; and then I'm also in the middle of a strenuous move an hour away from where I live for a new job. So...the patience is very much appreciated.

In a few moments, two familiar faces were coming out of a large, terra cotta pot in the garden shed – first Sarah, and then Scully. Hoggle was beside himself, dancing around the young woman in impassioned relief, and Sarah quickly had him in her arms and squeezed fit to break him. When Scully's red head appeared, Mulder did no less.

The agent was breathless in his arms, and not even from the way he hugged her. A hand lingered over her hair, pulling a glittering cobweb from her head. "You're alright? You're not hurt?"

"The statues…" Scully looked shocked, but not necessarily hurt. "They were talking-"

Sarah had set Hoggle down in order to embrace her other companions. "What, the false alarms?"

"Talking?" Mulder's eyes lit up. "Not…animatronics, talking?"

"Oy!" Hoggle kicked at Mulder's ankle, but thankfully missed. Scully quietly extricated herself from his grasp while he was distracted. "We got a bigger problem! From now on, we have to keep all eyes on Sarah. Jareth and the Labyrinth want her, and they won't stop at _nothing_ to have her."

"Oh, Hoggle," Sarah just smiled, ambling over with a slight sway of her hips. "I'm not worried." And here she linked arms with Agent Mulder. "Fox will protect me."

Hoggle's jaw nearly hit the floor. "He'll…. _what_?"

"Please, call me Mulder." He walked forward again and let the girl's hand slip from his arm without so much as a blink. "I'm glad you're both alright. We've still got nine hours, is that enough time to get through the Labyrinth?"

"Wha-" Sarah looked slightly consternated. Scully said nothing and decided to examine some of the statuary of the garden, a slight smile on her face. "Y-yeah, I guess so…If we avoid any more detours, then for sure."

"Great. Let's move, then."

* * *

Sarah was pushing against the door as hard as she could, but nothing was happening.

Scully tilted her head and examined the long, dusty wall that stretched along on either side; no other way to go forward, it seemed. "Did you go this way last time?"

" _Mnm_ ," was Sarah's grunted denial, about to dislocate her shoulder with effort. " _No_ -" A pant for breath, sweat collecting at her temples. "- _but_ ," huff, "last time I kept getting dropped in holes and," puff, "chased by the Cleaners and," wheeze, "ugh, it's no use! It won't budge."

"Here." Mulder's fingers touched her shoulder, and Sarah seemed to jump – though not with fear. "Let me, Ms. Williams."

She moved out of the way obligingly, watching with nervous interest as the agent began un-holstering his sidearm. "Y-you can call me Sarah."

"Mulder…" Scully cautioned-

-Too late. One quick shot at the lock, and a cloud of rust and dust erupted with a tired _cough_. He nudged the door with his toe and it swung open. Scully gave him a look, and he smiled. "What, you wanted me to ram into it with my shoulder like in the movies? Kick it down?"

"You're not funny."

Sarah, however, was practically squealing in delight. "Fox! That was fantastic!"

"Thanks." His response was monotone as he crossed the threshold. "Call me Mulder." Sarah looked briefly flustered, ready to protest, but as Scully was following her partner, and Didymus was coaxing Ambrosius as well, she decided instead to fall into line behind them.

The forest stretched before them: long tendrils of vines, the canopy so thick the sunlight filtered through in dusty clouds to catch the glitter shining on every surface. Mulder had the map out, and Sarah leaned over his left arm, so that her bosom was pretty well pressed against him, and her finger lazily circled one dark green section. "The Fiery Forest," she told him. Mulder's only response was a hum.

 _The Fiery_ ….Scully remembered the things she almost wished she could forget. _"Now, as to the young Anwer, as you were inquiring… He is stuck in the Fiery Forest as we speak."_ She remembered the boy who cried in her arms in the New York hotel room for the brother he couldn't save, and she felt chilled to the core. Almost as if he picked up on the emotion, Mulder looked at her from the corner of his eyes, inquiring, cautious. She shook her head and kept her mouth pressed into a thin line.

"What's so fiery about it?" Mulder asked in his lazy way, eyes scanning the dark greenery around them.

"Ya don't wanna find out…" was Hoggle's grumbled reply.

Sarah's hand had gone from the map to Mulder's arm, running down to touch his hand as though she meant to pull him along – or in some way invite him in to something. "So do you live in D.C., Fox? Agent Mulder," she immediately corrected with a dazzling smile.

"Not quite. Alexandria, Virginia, Ms. Williams." He did not correct himself on her name.

"Please, call me Sarah. Ms. Williams is my mother," and she laughed; if Scully didn't know she was an actress, she would never have thought it forced at all… "You know, I do a lot of regional tours. We go up and down the east coast a bunch!"

"Is that so…"

"Mhm! Maybe next time I'm in D.C., we could get together! Have dinner, tour the city, tour your apartment..." Hoggle looked like he'd just swallowed something nasty; he stopped walking and Ludo almost tripped over him. Scully just smiled. With their longer legs and Ludo's slow gate, Mulder and Sarah were quite ahead of everyone else. It was a good effort. "I bet it's nice, since you're an FBI agent. Do you have a one or two bedroom?"

"I don't have a bedroom at all."

"It's true, he sleeps on his couch."

"I-!" Sarah's frustration was peaking. She ran a hand over her face and absolutely _plastered_ a smile to her mouth. "Living simply – I can get with that."

Mulder paused and it allowed Scully to catch up with him, stopping to fumble for a drink of water from the bottle still at her hip. "You really want to see me, Ms. Williams?"

"It's _Sarah_." She almost stamped her foot in a manner that reminded Scully very much of her dwarven friend. "Sar-ah! I'm not desperate, if that's what you're saying!"

"I wouldn't assume."

"I just think it's perfectly normal – meet someone new, get to know them."

"Perfectly."

"It's not like a big deal! Even if we went on a date-" The words had no sooner left the young woman's lips but the ground shot away beneath the agents' feet. The pair were gone before she could finish the word. Sarah's hand instantly covered her mouth. " _Oh no_."

"Now you gone and done it!" Hoggle was peering over the hole, squidging one eye shut. "It's a chute for sure! Straight to the Bog."

Sir Didymus hollered down the shaft. "Sir Mulder!"

"I-I didn't mean- Oh, poor Dana, twice in one day!"

"Twice!" Hoggle's laugh was a bark. "An oubliette was bad enough, but this is the Bog of Eternal Stench! Ain't no twice about it!"

"Oh, what do we do…." Sarah paced around the pit for a moment, almost as if she was contemplating jumping in after them. "I didn't mean-"

"Now, don't start that business!" Hoggle shook his finger at her, more the actions of a concerned companion than an angry parent. "You know darn better, little lady! Flirtin' it up with that tall know-nothing-"

"Get off my case!" she almost snapped, resting on her knees by the edge of the hole. "I'm nobody's property, I can go out with whoever I want to. You're almost as bad as….as-"

"As whom, Sarah, dear?"

Sarah nearly pitched forward in her surprise. She looked over her shoulder, and there he was, leaning indolently against a tree – arms crossed, and long legs at the ankle….He was smiling. She glared at him in return.

Carefully, she picked herself up, dusting her jeans at the knee. Hoggle was absolutely nowhere to be seen. Ludo seemed to have taken his lead, for he had hold of Sir Didymus by the torso and muzzle and was failing to hide behind a whip-thin sugar sap tree. "Jareth." She barely looked at him, brushing her hair over one shoulder. "Your ears must have been burning."

"Something of the kind, yes." He began spinning a crystal over his gloved fingers, and God, how she hated him…

"Fox-" She stopped and struggled for a moment. "Dana _and_ Fox didn't do anything wrong; you should have left them alone."

" _They_ should have left well enough alone," the Goblin King countered, pushing himself off the tree with an easy motion. He stepped toward Sarah with slow, quiet footfalls, and her eyes grew wider. "I won't be told I cheated: I warned them both – him especially."

"W-what is it that you want?" He stood close enough that she would have had to look up to see into his face. She didn't want to do that, and so she let her eyes remain fixed on his chest. The white shirt was open to the sternum; she could see the key where it rested against his skin…The thing that only she could-

To Sarah's relief, Jareth came no closer, made no move to touch her at all. Just looked. "Oh, we'll wait on that for now. What is it _you_ want, precious thing, hm?"

Sarah's shoulders squared, she threw her head back. "To rescue the senator, of course – save my friends."

"Ah, are they your friends now, too?" She nodded, and he grinned with his sharp teeth. "You always did form bonds so quickly, didn't you?" Sarah glared and it only made the fey creature smile the more, but he shook his head. "Sad news, Sarah, my dear: you can save the senator, or you can save your friends – but you can't have both."

"W-what-?" She startled at the clock that appeared over his shoulder. Only three hours left, how was that possible! "You-"

Jareth clucked his tongue. "It's slow going with so much baggage – nothing of my doing this time, I'm afraid." He lifted his hand to brush aside a lock of her hair and Sarah jerked her chin back. The King scowled. "I came to offer you a little help of my own."

"Why should I take anything you give me?"

"If you're so serious about this mission of yours, I wouldn't think you'd look a blessing in the mouth." Jareth stepped to the side and bowed, arm outstretched. A path straight through the Labyrinth wove like a ribbon before her – and it went up, up, up to the Castle… "A yellow brick road for you, my sweet. You've got a cowardly lion, a heartless woodsman and a brainless idiot already, I think – disperse titles however you most prefer them."

Sarah eyed him mistrustfully. "And this is another one of your gifts, I take it?"

"Not precisely; it's what the Labyrinth wants, to help you."

"The Lab…" Sarah's arms fell to her side, a brief look of deep worry making her face go pale. "The Labyrinth wants to keep me here."

"Higgle was not lying to you in _this_ particular instance." Sarah cast a glare in his direction. "It responds to your power and to your will. You want to reach the Castle, and it wants to help you. Time is running out, my girl. What will you do?"

There was a long silence before Sarah turned her back on the King, motioning to her hidden group. "Didymus, Ludo, Hoggle – come on, you guys."

"Oh no." Jareth stepped round in front of her, his look no longer so jovial. "Not this time. Your little…. _friends_ don't come."

Sarah scowled up at him, nose wrinkled and brow drawn down. "Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"The Labyrinth may be guiding you to the center, but the Castle is _my_ domain. It happens I don't invite your collection of driveling idiots and reprobates. I disliked their behavior on their last… _visit_."

"You're trying to trick me. You think I don't see it, but I do."

"I would never dare presume to underestimate your intelligence – nor do I question your _bravery_ , so that I know you will not hesitate to go the rest alone."

Another silence, this one longer and tenser than any that came before it. She stared at him, and he at her. Saying nothing to her adversary, Sarah stepped carefully around him, never turning her back. "I'll win again – you'll see."

The only thing that really frightened her was when he melted away like the Cheshire cat, with nothing but his smile behind….His smile, and the voice that called, "How eagerly I wait to see that grand sight, Sarah, love…."

Hoggle appeared again; he'd managed to hide himself beneath a fallen log, and he trembled head to foot, yellow-blue eyes round and wet. "S-Sarah…" His large hands played awkwardly with each other. "I'm sorry bout what I said before…Course you can have whoever it is you want. Only….don't go t'the Castle – not this time."

The smile that she gave her friend was almost a painful one. The young actress bent down and let her hand brush against his skull cap and his large ears. "Hoggle….If I kiss you this time, do you think he'll drop you into the Bog, too?" She didn't wait for his bashful protest. Sarah just pressed her lips to his wrinkled brow and stood up again. "This is how it's done." She smiled at Didymus and Ludo, the latter of whom had started keening again. "I'll be back before you know it."


	7. Chapter 7

"Oh my _God_ -"

"It's chemical warfare." Mulder was bent over, hands at the knees, dry heaving. "It's against the Geneva Convention, that's what it is."

"Who cares what it is." Scully had her face buried in the elbow of her sleeve and was trying mightily not to gag- "How do we escape it?"

The Bog Sarah had mentioned when they first entered the Labyrinth…How could it be anything else? The stench of it was certainly grotesque enough, and Hoggle was right – it was an experience she could well have done without. And it seemed to be just as eternal, too. The slide had dropped the pair of them at the edge of a wall, with just a foot of space between them and the putrescent waters that lapped at the shoreline. Withered trees and anemic birds stretched beyond her vision (perhaps because her eyes were watering). Flies seemed to buzz at chemical vents: they spit more rotted, crude material than the steam of an Aboveground geyser. Scully jumped slightly when Mulder touched her elbow, pointing to a thicker, solid spot to their left. At her nod, they inched along toward that tiny respite, backs pressed against the wall, hardly daring to breathe.

Fox was carefully taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, and before Dana could protest, he'd brushed her hair from off her neck and had tied it around her nose and mouth. "But what about…" It was not a cure, but it was better; the scent of clean laundry at least kept breathing from being painfully torturous. Mulder unknotted his tie and wrapped that similarly around his own face. Scully smiled at the corners of her mouth, visible only for the way her eyes crinkled, and she touched the thin, dangling portion of the tie. "I'm afraid it's going to be ruined after this."

"That's alright." Mulder shrugged and was busy getting the map from the inner pocket of his sports coat. "I can just wear the one that's shaped like a fish."

"Mulder, no."

The tall agent brushed off the top of a tree stump and settled here, stretching his long legs before him. Scully looked over his arm. "Okay, here's the Bog – holy cow, that can't be."

"What, what is it?"

"Ms. Williams pointed out the Fiery Forest here," Mulder replied, circling the area Sarah had tried to seductively point out before. "And the Bog is way over here…but that slide was only a couple of seconds at _best_."

Scully just sighed, her head leaning against that of her partner's. "Mulder, what are we even doing here? We're caught up in things that we can't understand. Even if we found the Senator, how would we get out again? What path would we follow? Where would the exit be?"

"You're not giving up, are you?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Of course not. I just think that maybe…."

"…Maybe?" Mulder prompted her.

But Scully didn't even know what she maybe thought. Instead, she delicately shoved the man over on the tree stump so she could sit as well. With a slightly forlorn look, she muttered, "I wish we hadn't dragged Sarah into this."

"I'm not so certain we weren't dragged into this by Sarah. I don't mean it's her fault!" he quickly amended at the look the fiery little agent was giving him. "I just think I, uh….didn't quite anticipate what a, shall we say, distraction she would be to our old friend the Goblin King."

That gave Scully pause. Her head and shoulders picked up while Fox went back to studying the map. "That's true…"

"Hm?" He did not look up, trying to navigate any way at all through the Bog that _wouldn't_ require an amphibious excursion.

"Sarah – she's what he's focused on. He's infatuated."

Mulder just snorted. "Yeah, I guess you could call it that."

"Sarah is the one with all the power." That did make her partner look up, tilting his head at her and quietly listening. "I mean it. So long as she's what he wants, she holds all the cards." Scully smiled again, more slyly this time, and managed to push herself back up onto her feet. "Never mind, I take that back: I'm glad she's with us. She's not the one who can guide us through the Labyrinth – she's the one who can beat the Goblin King."

Mulder watched his partner for a little while, but then slowly began to fold up the map again. "What about me?"

"What about you? Oh," Dana laughed a bit. "Yes, I know you could beat the Goblin King, too, Mulder; we've done it before."

"Not that," he shook his head, carefully replacing the now-worn map. "The other thing."

"What?" Scully puzzled for a minute – and then gave a very slight sigh, extending her hand to pull him up. "Yes, I'm glad you're here, too."

He smiled at her. "Good."

* * *

Straight to the Castle…

This wasn't like before, when she and her friends had picked their way through the Junk Heaps to the main gate of the city. Jareth had told her the Labyrinth would take her directly to the Castle, just like she wanted (thought she wanted) – and it did. If there was an obstruction in the roadway, the Labyrinth cleared it; if she came to a gorge, it pulled the two sides close enough together for her to step over; if she nearly tripped, its branches and vines would catch her. Sarah couldn't say thank you. Her heart was too much in her throat.

And instead of through the heart of the Goblin City, the Labyrinth took her to a side entrance – a heavy door made of copper, dozens of locks and chains hanging off of it. Each one crumbled at her touch, and the door swung open. It was a courtyard of the castle, she knew without knowing. The open space, the stone-and-brickwork, the fountain that trickled in one corner with a goblin statue (or a real goblin) spitting water…She knew where she was.

Just beyond a laurel hedge was a door. Sarah rushed to it without thought, tested the handle – and was surprised to find it unlocked. Well, perhaps not so surprised. Everything was trying to bring her to this place…What might happen now that she'd arrived? Her stomach twisted unpleasantly, but what choice was there? With a short push, the door swung open, and she stepped cautiously inside.

It was shadowy, dusty – eerily quiet. No goblins, no signs of life….No Goblin King either. She tried to call, " _Senator_ -" but her voice caught. Awkwardly, she cleared her throat and tried again. "Senator Beaumont!" There was no response but her own echo down the massive stone corridors…She'd spent so little time in the Castle before; how big was it? How would she find her way? Or what might she find? That was a worse thought. More hesitantly, she cried out, "Jareth?" But there was no answer to that, either.

"Time, time…" Sarah mumbled to herself. Three hours when she left Hoggle and the others – when she last saw Jareth. How long did it take her to walk the Labyrinth's streamlined trail? How long was she wandering the castle halls? That seemed longer. In desperation, she began opening doors. _Please, don't be a bedroom, don't be a bedroom_ \- So far, her luck held: a…a salon or a lounge or whatever the difference was. Horsehair sofas, goblets of gleaming liquid, dishes full of plump fruits – including peaches. Sarah was disinclined and she shut the door. Down the hall, she tried again. Bookshelves on every wall, climbing to the ceiling…Huge chandeliers and sconces casting a soft glow, the scent of old paper everywhere. Far more tempting. What could be inside, if she looked for just a mome- " _No_. I'm not that easy." Sarah shook her head and instead called out, " _Senator, are you here?_ " Silence. Supposing he was gagged? "Supposing nothing." Sarah sighed and blew a lock of hair from her eyes. "Get real, Williams. Let's go."

The Castle was its own labyrinth, and that figured…Labyrinths within labyrinths, puzzles within mazes. And so many doors…A closet; a cloak room; an herb cellar. Still she kept going. She expected to find another pantry when she yanked on another simple, wooden door, half the beams splintered-

Sarah gasped, stopping short in the threshold. This room was massive, and dark, almost black….Something like fairy lights hung in the air, so that there was a small, blue glow nearby. At least this was different. Hesitantly, she entered, staring at the floor to be sure of her footing. _Marble tile_ …It was smooth and cool, almost cold. Her breath seemed to come in quicker and quicker gasps. She was studying the ground so intently she bumped into one of the lights and squeaked more from surprise than from hurt. Tilting her chin up, she touched her forehead. "A crystal?" Almost as if on cue, the light intensified, and the room became illuminated in a soft, blue-white glow.

A ballroom….the ceiling was vaulted, and a chandelier hung from its center point – yet that remained unlit. Instead, she could see now, dozens of crystals floated, as if hung on strings, each softly burning to light the room. And there, in the center- " _Jareth_." She stopped short, half aggressive and half cautious.

But the Goblin King merely bowed, one hand sweeping low before him to almost touch the ground. "At your service."

Sarah took a hesitant step forward. "What trick have you got planned this time?"

"I don't do _tricks_ , Sarah." His flaxen brow twitched. "I perform _magic_. So you see." He twisted his black gloved hand in an easy motion, and Sarah felt her simple white shirt and jeans melting. In their place, it felt for a moment like she was wrapped in cotton candy-

The dress, that stupid, white, voluminous dress. Jareth had clothed her in the same costume from her teenage dream, corset and iridescent sparkles and all. _At least he didn't undress me_ … She balled her fists in the layers of fabric. "Have you ever heard of asking permission?"

He ignored that, slowly walking toward her with the measured step of a predator – or someone trying not to spook a prey animal, at the very least. "I thought, if you were touring the Castle, you ought to at least see the best part."

"I asked you a question!"

When he was within arm's reach of her, he stopped, and Sarah felt suddenly nervous. Was it the damned ties making it so hard to breathe? Or was it a deeper sense of anxiety in the pit of her stomach? Jareth was staring at her face. What fault could he possibly be finding there? "Of course I am familiar with that. For example-" He raised his hands, and for half a breath, she thought he meant to hit her. The King's brow wrinkled at her flinching. When she stood straight again, he said, "-May I have this dance?"

Sarah stared at him. It felt like her head was swimming. "All this going on….and you want to dance with me?"

"We're in the Grand Ballroom; it seems appropriate."

Hesitatingly, without knowing fully why, Sarah's right hand reached up and found his left. Perfectly practiced, she could feel his palm circling her waist, even through all those layers of taffeta and silk. Her left hand rested on his bicep and she hoped her fingers weren't trembling. There was no music. He took her through a waltz to start with.

Jareth was warm in the cool atmosphere of the ballroom…It felt distressingly easy to be so close to his body. He startled her by speaking, and she could practically hear how his voice would be a hum at his throat. "Now, isn't this delightful? So much more pleasant than all that grousing and fighting."

Sarah's own voice was caught in her throat, she had to clear it to reply. "We can all stop fighting if you just stop kidnapping people, Goblin King."

"Hm. It bears thought. But then, how would I ever get such charming visitors, hm? Agent Mulder, Agent Scully, you-"

"Have you considered trying a dinner party?"

He did not laugh, but his thin mouth crooked at one corner in a sardonic smile. "Such domestic diversions are generally the domain of a hostess, I understand." She was beginning to feel almost too hot now…Before she could pull away, Jareth continued. "You're a much better dancer now, you know."

She felt herself blushing against her will. "Thanks."

"What's that term? A 'triple threat?' No doubt your work demands some practice in the art."

"Well, I'm not going to be cast in 'A Chorus Line' or anything, but I get by."

"And your diligence does pay off." Before Sarah could respond, he'd suddenly twirled her and she felt the skirt billow about her knees. She was breathless with delight, beaming when he finished, and Sarah was almost startled to find the dance done, the Goblin King staring intently at her once more. Her mouth felt dry. "Or perhaps it is only a natural talent. She grows up, and she is only cleverer, more talented, more beautiful." He looked down at her skirt and seemed almost sad. "You do not need such finery and feathering to stand out." He touched the gown, and the whole thing melted away like spun sugar…She was in the clothes she'd come in once more. "Whatever it is you wear, you are everything I want."

Sarah could not say this was the Goblin King at his most human, but at his most vulnerable? Perhaps. Without a word, he took up her hands again and resumed the dance…Without the skirt between them, they were even closer together now. She could almost brush her nose against his cheek, or- "Sarah."

Her breath caught in her throat. "Y-yes?"

"I will release Senator Beaumont – if you remain in his stead."

Sarah went stiff in his grasp, trying to pull away. Jareth would not let her. "You're blackmailing me!"

"Yes. How else would you stay?"

"Stop it-" She tugged against his grip.

"Would it be so terrible? Do you think I would do you harm?" He leaned forward, and she could feel his breath against her collar. "Let me tell you now, I would _never_."

"Jareth-!"

"Stay with me, Sarah." He no longer led the dance, but stopped them in the center of the dance floor. The young woman couldn't help but to find her gaze trapped, looking into his mismatched eyes. How deep and how dark they were, how intensely he returned her gaze. "Be my bride and remain with me." Sarah couldn't move, and the Goblin King brought her closer, leaning towards her. "My Goblin Queen…"

"N- _no_!" She barely could press her arms between their bodies, but a short shove was all that was required to free herself from his grasp. He was too startled to hold on tighter. "I'm not going to be kept here like a bird in a cage like _you're_ keeping the Senator!" Sarah stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet; her arms felt like gelatin. "I'm going to stop you, Jareth." Before he could beguile her any further, Sarah turned and fled from the ballroom, her long, dark hair streaming out behind her.

For his part, the Goblin King remained exactly where she'd left him, jaw clenching tighter and tighter as his hands became fists at his side. When his body could bear the tension and the rage no longer, every crystal hanging in the air shattered.


	8. Chapter 8

Every path they'd taken was a dead end or just a loop back to the start…Mulder couldn't find the opening for the chute that had deposited them here, and Scully couldn't find any kind of trail that didn't end right where all the others did – in the Bog of Eternal Stench. The minutes were ticking by into hours. She could feel the tension inside her stomach and refused to let it show.

Mulder was muttering to himself as they took a trail for the second, third, tenth time, dropping sunflower seeds from his pocket like they were Hansel and Gretel. "What's the rule about mazes? You always follow the wall…" Scully didn't like to interrupt him, so she instead carried the map, holding it open before her. How the greenery twisted and turned, the walls moving as if on bearings…Their brown, stinky hell, that could be clearly visualized on the map, but no amount of logic; no navigating by moss, by sun, by shadows; could connect them to any other portion of the Labyrinth.

She was still trying to make sense of it all when something on the paper caught her notice. A ribbon of the path straightening and stretching – and toward the Castle-! "Mulder-"

" _Ha ha_!" He sounded like he'd gone completely mad. Before Scully could say a word, he'd turned and caught her up in his arms, twirling her once and completely crushing the map between them before setting her on her feet again. " _Look, Scully_!"

The small agent's breath caught in her throat. " _How_ -" A door! Never in all her days had Dana ever been so happy to see a door, nor would she ever be so overjoyed ever again.

Mulder couldn't contain his excitement, pulling the necktie off his nose and grabbing the handle. "You see, Scully? It's just like before, we're going to get that Goblin King son of a bi-"

He pulled on the door and Scully felt her stomach drop out. "Oh _no_ , Mulder!" Her partner looked across the threshold and his face went white. It was the same stone corridor from the entrance, exactly where they started! The same massive doors, the same, glittering bricks. Even the eye fungus glared at Mulder, remembering his poking and prodding. She felt unconscionably like crying.

Mulder leaned against a wall, stupefied, as his partner stumbled forward. "But…but it _can't_ be…"

Scully leaned her arm against one side of the wall and buried her round face in the crook of her elbow. "It's hopeless…we might as well go back to the Bog of Eternal Stench for all the progress we've made!"

"No!" Mulder was anxiously trying to rally her spirits, laying his broad hands on her shoulders and gently turning her around. "No, Scully, we can't give up! The Senator is counting on us – and Sarah, too!"

She sniffled and scrubbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her borrowed shirt. "But there's only a few hours left! Even if we could get to where we were before, we'd never make it in time!"

"There's one thing we haven't tried yet." Mulder's eyes were grey and grim, his jaw squared.

Scully got a hold of herself and took a long drink of water from the bottle at her hip. "W-what's that?"

"We haven't tried going left yet."

She blinked at him, blue eyes widening slightly. "But Sarah said-"

"I _know_ what Sarah said. But it's the one thing we haven't tried, and time is running out. If we don't try, what difference does it make? The Senator's stuck and we lose. But we have to _try_ , Scully."

Dana covered Fox's hand on her shoulder with her own, feeling some of her mettle returning. She nodded. "Right. Let's go." Mulder turned the exact opposite direction Sarah had led them in when they first arrived all those torturous hours ago – and they took off at a run.

* * *

"I…can't…believe it…" Scully clutched the stitch in her side and leaned against her partner, her words coming between gasps for breath. "Straight…to the Castle!"

Mulder was grinning, mopping sweat from his red face. "The Labyrinth's best kept secret…" Against all sense and reason, the left-most path took them directly to their destination. A gate to what Scully could best guess was a stable directed them to a side entrance of the massive stone edifice. _Everything we went through, all that we did, and it was so simple…_ "How much time is there left?"

Scully shook her wristwatch and frowned. "I'm not sure. Fifteen minutes, I think."

"Damn it." Mulder straightened his back and rolled his shoulders. "Alright, we'll cover more ground if we split up."

"Mulder, no!" She grabbed his arm at the elbow. "This is exactly what got us in trouble last time; remember the hotel? I'm not leaving you."

The tall agent's face was grim. "Someone's got to find Sarah, Scully. You heard what he said – she's the only one who can get the key for the Senator."

"And suppose one of us finds her and can't find the Senator – _or_ each other?"

" _Listen to me_." He lay his palm against her red hair and Scully stilled. "No matter what happens, I will find you. No goblins in _hell_ are going to stop me."

Dana sighed, her shoulders drooping. "Alright. But I'm going left." Fox smiled at her.

* * *

But how he hated it when his partner was right.

Mulder had barely wished Scully luck and set off before his own ran out. The first room he'd come to was some kind of goblin den – and they were much more horrible close-up and without the benefit of alley shadows. They were scaly, lumpy little devils; jagged teeth; drooling maws; horns and claws and cloven hooves. They chattered and howled and _laughed_ in a way he could not identify, except to say it made the hairs on his arms stand straight. He reached for his firearm and was immediately overcome by a wave of the little beasts. They chewed on the back of his neck, or snuffled at him with the snouts of pigs. One had the chamber of his gun open and was _eating_ the bullets.

Stuck as he was on his stomach, Mulder could only see the Goblin King's boots when he appeared before him. _Of course he would. He'd never miss his chance to gloat_. "Now, I thought there was an old mortal saying about a woman's intuition…?"

" _Get them off me_!" He could feel teeth in his shoulder – and not to take a bite, no, but to experiment on what he might taste like, his texture, or just his general makeup. Their little paws and hands reminded him of so many bugs crawling over his skin. Nails were tearing his shirt open, and he could feel blood beginning to drip down his arm. It was more maddening than the Bog, if that was even possible…

"Oh, very well…" The King gave a command in a language Mulder could not even begin to guess at; nor did he want to try, gasping for breath as the swarm pulled back. It didn't hurt, not yet. He was too stunned to move – or so he thought. The agent tried, and found himself stuck exactly as before. "I didn't say you could stand up."

"You slimy, cheating, son of a who-"

"Agent Mulder, your language!" The King seated himself at the ledge of the room's only window, dusty light illuminating his silvery hair. "Who knows where the ladies in the Castle might be."

The injunction had the opposite effect: Mulder felt his heart pounding with hope. "You don't have Sarah?"

The faery's mouth pursed. "No, not _yet_."

He could feel himself beginning to hyperventilate. _Shock. Blood loss? Legs should be elevated, if I could just roll onto my side…_ "She doesn't love you, you know!" The difficult breathing was becoming a laugh, and Mulder felt dizzy.

But Jareth barely deigned to look in his direct. "Of _course_ she loves me. She has always loved me. She just doesn't know it yet." Capricious, the Goblin King abandoned his perch, strolling over to his pinned prey. "You want to see the Senator, do you? That's what all this is about?" Jareth dusted his fingers against his sternum, and Mulder felt a little of the magic lifting. He could raise himself to his knees, but no higher. "Very well, Little Fox. I shall give you _precisely_ what you want."

A crystal hit the floor next to Mulder's left hand and shattered. He flinched away but fell to the floor again – the room was spinning like a centrifuge, and in the middle stood the Goblin King, his sleeves and his hair billowing in the breeze of his own making. Gone were the goblins and all their yellow little eyes; gone was the picture window that looked out upon the Labyrinth. This was a chamber of a very different sort. The spinning had stopped, but Mulder's inner ear didn't seem to notice, and he was barely able to turn to keep from vomiting on himself.

"Behold!" Jareth had turned away from one toy to the other, opening his arms and indicating a gilded cage dangling from a bar on the wall. "The South's own favorite son! Daniel Jackson Beaumont."

Mulder gasped for breath, blinking blood, goblin saliva, and sweat from his eyes. "Senator…" The man was naked but for a ragged cloth around his loins. Goblins giggled with piercing shrieks of delight as they poked and prodded him with their long claws. He scrambled from one part of the cage to another to escape his torment, his pasty, flabby body covered with sores and weeping wounds. He swung like an animal from the bars and made sounds nearly as inhuman in their desperation. Mulder couldn't stand to watch. "What are you going to do with him."

"Whatever I feel like." It pleased the King to look upon his captive, and he turned with the same comfortable smile back to Agent Mulder. "Don't, for an instant, bother to pity him, old sport. The Senator played fair shrift with me. He wanted power, and I gave it to him. He never asked what I wanted in return."

"You're…disgusting…"

"Me?" He feigned hurt, his gloved fingers pointing to his chest. "Disgusting? What of the Senator's own deeds, how is it _I_ am the only one who deserves your censure?" Clearing his throat, a scroll appeared before the faery, and he perused it lazily as it floated there before him. "A bill to provide for the welfare of the misfortunate – against. A program to feed children starving in your wretched cities – against. A chance to give medicine to those dying without it – oh no, not our Senator, not our lad." The paper disappeared and, lazily, he walked over and pushed the cage. The man dropped and the goblins could poke and claw at him as much as they liked. "Saving the tax payer's money for better things, Little Fox! War, pestilence, plague – war was his favorite, though. I'm not sure if Danny Boy here preferred those big rolling boxes of yours – what's the word, tanks? Something like that; or the planes that shoot missiles that blow up a shepherd's hut three boarders away with the man's wife and children still inside. Made him feel like a real man, that." The King's mouth was open in a contemptuous grin, and his teeth were horrible and sharp. "Don't mistake me, I don't give a tinker's damn how you mortals kill one another. Slaughter the whole lot for all that I care – bombs, bullets, bayonets, it's all the same. But _don't_ ask me to feel sympathetic to the ones who give the order but haven't the _courage_ -" he emphasized this word by shoving the cage again; the Senator went rolling. "-to take up the arms themselves."

He turned back to his other victim and smiled more conservatively, one hand tucked behind him at the small of his back. "What you ought to be asking is what am I going to do with _you_." The faery squatted at the knees, examining his prey. "You didn't make a bargain to enter the Labyrinth – and so I am under no obligation to send you back." Like a claw, his hand shot out and gripped Mulder by the chin, vice-like and bruising. "I think I'll make a valet out of you; goblins are so bad at household niceties, as you can imagine." The agent glared at him, and repeated a phrase about his mother that made the King cluck his tongue. "We _will_ have to curb that uncooperative streak – and believe you me, we will." He released the man and rose to his full height again. "To dear Dana I will be more generous. I will put her to auction for the Kings of the Underground and select a suitable match for her. She will be honored to mother a royal line of your betters."

" _I won't let you touch her_." Fox spat a glob of blood from his mouth as he growled.

"Yes, yes," the King merely waved him off. "I'll live to regret this and I haven't seen the last of you, I know all the clichés. Where _is_ our darling Dana, anyway? I should like to have her witness the minutes tick by; call me petty."

He clapped his hands together twice and Scully simply dropped next to Mulder, on her knees at his left, crying out in pain as she landed. "What in the- Mulder!" She helped him up onto his knees, quickly assessing his wounds and brushing his hair back with her hands. "What happened to you-"

"There will be time enough for that _after_ my victory." Jareth stood apart from them, a raised portion at the end of the room. Mulder glared at him as Scully held him up; he might drop to the floor without her. The Goblin King was smiling. "I daresay I like this game even better than our last."

Mulder felt Scully's hands spasm against him. "You won't get away with this."

Jareth sighed, tilting his head to the side. " _More_ clichés? I expected better from you, my pet. Now, we have just…" With a motion of his hands, a stately grandfather clock sprang from the floor and stretched toward the ceiling. How the pendulum swung back and forth in pitiless time. "Around about a minute left, I should say. It was a good try, I'll give you that. You made it here. That's more than most can say – more than Anwer got to, certainly." At the looks upon the agent's faces, he smiled. "You think I'd forgotten? Oh no, my memory is punishingly long. What is it the poet said?" Humming, he began, " _Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind_ -"

There, and no further; the door (for there was a door now, suddenly, though Mulder never saw one before) swung open with a terrible bang – and it was Sarah at the threshold. "Jareth, stop it!"

The Goblin King stood frozen to the spot for a moment, a look of stupefaction on his face. "Sarah?" He shook himself free of her magicless spell, opening his arms wide. "How glad we are you decided to join us! The Senator is here, the one you've so yearned to find. Shall I introduce you?"

But all the while he spoke, the young woman tore down the room; her leg brushed Scully in her hurry, who watched, horrified without knowing why. The young woman's voice was choked, she almost looked like she would cry. "Stop, please stop; I'm begging you."

" _Begging_?" His growl was horrible. Scully's grip on her partner tightened once more. "Didn't _I_ beg _you_? _Ha_! 'Please,' she says, brazen hussy. Do you think I am so easily move-"

He didn't finish. Sarah had flung her arms around the man and pressed her mouth to his. Without hesitation, Jareth's own arms wrapped around her, held her close against him and kissed the girl fit to die. Mulder's jaw dropped. The goblins stopped their torments of the Senator and retreated to a shadowy corner, for from the two something indefinable seemed to pulse.

There was, thought Scully, no visible reason why these two should fit in any way: he fair where she was dark; a king, an immortal being of magic, and just a girl. And yet how helplessly they were drawn to one another. How closely they fit, as if cast from the same mold. Propriety would make this moment a private one and yet she could not make herself look away.

And the clock had begun to toll.

In the same movement, Sarah's hand reached between their chests – fixed upon the key at the Goblin King's sternum, and _yanked_. He made a pained sound against her mouth. But Sarah had turned from the embrace and thrown the object for everything she was worth. " _Dana_!"

Scully scrambled to her feet, caught the key as it arched through the air. "I've got it!"

Jareth still had his arms around her stomach, and she made no effort to fight him. "You have to hurry-"

But Mulder had already pulled himself to his feet, using his partner's shoulder for support. He hobbled to the cage even as the clock continued to chime and the Castle shook around their feet. "Senator Beaumont – I'm Agent Fox Mulder, I'm with the FBI. It's alright, sir, we're here to help you-"

Scully turned, looking over her shoulder, to look for her, but Sarah was watching none of this. Her hands were on the Goblin King's chest and she was weeping as if she might break. "Jareth – I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Hush now." He stroked his hands down her cheeks stained with dirt and tears, and tilted her head up to him. "It's alright. No more tears: I will take care of you."

She jumped closer to him as a stone fell from the chamber ceiling. "I-is the Castle going to fall apart again?"

"A little. Not to worry, it can be set right."

"I never meant for any of this to happen!"

Still he held her, the high bone of his cheek pressed against her hair. "Some things cannot be helped."

Mulder touched Scully's shoulder and she jumped in spite of herself. "I have him. We need to get out of here."

Scully shook her head. "We can't go without Sarah." She turned to call to her, but the girl was glowing – incorporeal, in the Goblin King's arms and out. The agent opened her mouth and no sound came out, only more light. And still the Castle continued to fall, even the stones beneath her feet, and the world fell down, down, down, down…


	9. Chapter 9

Mulder had five days medical leave. Agent Skinner didn't ask how the man had become so injured looking for the missing Senator, and though Scully thought he wanted to…perhaps he knew better. She sat with her partner in his hospital room as he was bandaged up, and watched him wince as he gingerly tested his shoulder. "Well, I'm not sure what was worse – the goblin bites, or the antibiotic shot they gave me in the ass."

Scully's lips were pursed, unamused. "I see there's no permanent damage, you still make the same old stupid remarks."

Mulder didn't have the energy for his usual, dashing smile, but he managed a conservative one instead, leaning back amongst the hospital pillows and sipping from a Styrofoam cup. "How's the Senator?"

"Stable. We got a card from his wife – and a….monetary encouragement not to say anything about the Senator's whereabouts. I guess he's been spouting off about goblins since he came back. It's being credited to trauma."

"I don't want her money."

"You should, I happen to know you didn't splurge on disability insurance." Scully just sighed. "But I'll endorse it over to the Policeman's Ball or something…" Looking into her lap, she added, "There's talk of a special election in Georgia. The Senator's advisors say he's more than competent to continue to hold his duties of office – but for his own personal health after such an ordeal, is stepping down."

Mulder sighed through the nose. "Let's hope the next elected official doesn't make any deals with Goblin Kings…" Scully said nothing, smiling quietly to herself and finding her partner's hand where it hung off the side of the hospital bed. His thumb briefly brushed the back of her own hand, and she felt the scrape of the thin hospital linens. After a quiet moment, the man spoke. "We came back to Sarah's room, didn't we?"

Scully raised a red brow. "I'm surprised you remember that; you were all but passed out at the time."

Mulder said nothing directly in response, instead staring up at the ceiling. "Hoggle was there."

"He was – pitching a fit over Sarah."

"Was she crying?"

"No; she'd stopped by then."

"Good." The lanky agent wearily closed his eyes. "He isn't worth her tears." Rolling to his good side, Mulder's eyes caught some of their usual mischievous light, and he said, "Get me some good, dirty magazines, will you, Scully? It's boring as hell in here."

* * *

They had been back to work for a month when the intern rolled the mail cart to their door. "Pardon me, Agent Scully, Agent Mulder. You have something."

Mulder was stooped over his desk, his shoulder largely recovered. "Is it the dismembered hand I'm expecting?"

"Ah…" the underpaid intern thumbed the envelope. "No…?"

"Don't care."

"Mulder." Scully pursed her lips at him and took the envelope from the cart. "Thank you, Mitchell." When the young man had left, Scully strolled casually over to his desk and sat on the edge, while her partner poured over photos of his latest UFO crash site. "You aren't curious?"

"No dismembered cryptoid hand, no time," he muttered, placing his pencil between his teeth as he studied.

"Mm." In a cool, easy manner, she began to open it. "Well, the return address is from Sarah Williams." That made him stand straight and take notice. From the envelope, two tickets fluttered to the floor. Mulder stooped to pick them up, and Scully read the included note aloud. "'I told you I do a lot of regional tours. – SW'"

"Two tickets to 'Camelot' at the Lincoln Theater."

"And," Scully added, pulling a final scrap from the envelope, "a pass to see her backstage."

Mulder seemed to smile in spite of himself. "Well, I guess you're my date for the evening."

"Just remember – no sunflower seeds in the theater this time," and she taped the envelope against her partner's forehead.

* * *

Sarah played Guinevere, and she did so beautifully, as if she were born to be a fairytale queen. For a moment, watching her on the dark stage, Scully thought she might have been; and then hated herself for the thought. But it was a hard one to avoid, when she sang "Before I Gaze at You Again" with tears in her eyes, as if she meant it.

And, what if, the agent wondered, she did?

Dana was glad to be seeing Sarah again, when the curtain fell and the cast made their final bows. She liked the girl: she was bright, and kind, and brave, and Goblin Kings, Labyrinths, and missing senators aside, she enjoyed her company. She was excited when an usher showed she and her partner backstage, and thought Sarah might be, too.

However, when they entered her dressing room door...

Sarah was still in full costume, stage makeup and notes scattered across her vanity table. She was bent before it, face in her hands, and weeping. The agents were as startled as she was. "O-oh, Dana! F-Fox!" She quickly rubbed at her face with a moist towelette and great gobs of stage makeup came off with it. The real girl peeked beneath the theatrical mask, and Scully felt her heart aching for the young thing, without fully knowing why. "I-I'm so glad you came, I'm so very happy to see you." She stretched out her hands toward the agents like old friends, and Scully was about to grasp hers in return-

But her blue eyes caught sight of something on the dressing table, the thing that had reduced the girl to tears. "That's…" One of the Goblin King's crystals, just waiting there for her – with a barn owl feather resting next to it. The intention couldn't have been clearer.

Sarah bit her lip and looked at it for a moment, her shoulders shivering with repressed tears. "I-It's silly to be crying over such a thing, I know. Please forgive me; after a performance, actors are on edge. I-I knew a guy at Columbia who said he'd rather come down from coke than being on stage. That's all this is. Just my nerves." Without waiting for a reply, she opened a drawer of the dressing table and shoved the crystal and feather inside. "It's crazy! Things could never work out between us anyway." She laughed uncomfortably. Mulder shifted nervously on his feet next to his partner. "Even if all you thought about was all the things I'd have to give up! Well!" She rose to her feet and clapped her hands together. "Enough about me. I'm so happy to see you!" and she embraced Scully in a fond hug. "It wasn't much of a goodbye we had, and we went through a lot together! Tell me everything that's been happening with you – well, everything you can without having to kill me after, anyway." She laughed, and they pretended it wasn't forced, and everything was fine.

But Mulder was in a foul temper when they left an hour later, fists shoved into the pockets of his coat and walking like a hurricane. Scully said nothing, skirting him and waiting until the pressure opened his mouth – which it always did. "She can't be in love with him!" His partner asked for no clarification, waiting quietly as he gesticulated wildly. "That's crazy! She knows exactly what he is, exactly what he _does_ -"

"Mulder." Scully stopped him with a hot light in her blue eyes. It was absurd to jump to Sarah's defense in such a matter – for what was there even to defend? – but she did. "There are some people in this world who just cannot get away from each other. And there are some unexplained phenomena you can't put in an X-File."

The man said nothing to that, and little as he drove Scully back to her own apartment. She noticed he'd left the barn owl feather from Georgia sitting on his dashboard, an exact replica of the one on Sarah's dresser; and she wondered where that crystal might be as well, and if it had brought them any of the luck Mulder had hoped for.


End file.
